Role of chemokines polymorphisms in diseases

The interest into chemokine polymorphisms came with the discovery of allelic variants of HIV co-receptors (CCR5 and CXCR4 mainly) that confers protection against virus entry into usual permissive cells. Since then, chemokines genetic background has been deeply studied in order to find associations between allelic variants and inflammation-related diseases as well as infectious diseases. In addition to HIV infection, chemokines genetic variations have been involved in other infectious diseases as HCV, Malaria and West Nile Virus, and also in a variety of non-infectious diseases such as cancer, auto-immune and cardiovascular diseases. This review aims to present genetic variations in chemokines encoding genes and discuss their role, sometimes controversial, in a variety of diseases.

► Chemokine receptors and theirs ligands are polymorphic.
► Chemokines and chemokine receptors polymorphisms play roles in a variety of diseases.
► Genetic variations in chemokines have controversial effects.
► Genetic variations of chemokine receptors have well characterized effects.
► Chemokines are major inflammation players through leukocytes recruitment.