Investigation of the association between Toll-like receptor 2 gene polymorphisms and Behçet's disease in Japanese patients

Behçet's disease (BD) is a chronic systemic inflammatory disorder characterized by recurrent ocular symptoms, oral and genital ulcers, and skin lesions. The etiology of BD is still uncertain, but genetic and environmental factors likely both play an important role in BD development. In the present study, we investigated whether polymorphisms of Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2), previously reported to recognize BD candidate antigens, are associated with BD. Two hundred Japanese patients with BD and 128 Japanese healthy controls were recruited. We genotyped five single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the TLR2 gene and assessed the allele/genotype diversity between cases and controls for all SNPs. No significant differences in the frequency of TLR2 alleles, genotypes, and haplotypes in the BD cases were detected compared with the controls. These data indicate that TLR2 polymorphisms do not play an important role in the development of BD.