CTLA-4 gene polymorphism is not associated with conventional multiple sclerosis in Japanese

We investigated the polymorphisms of exon 1 (+49A/G) and promoter (−318C/T and −651C/T) regions of the CTLA-4 gene in 133 Japanese patients with conventional/classical multiple sclerosis (MS) and 156 healthy controls. Patients with optico-spinal MS (OSMS) or atypical clinical attacks were excluded from the study. There was no significant difference in the distribution of polymorphisms between patients and controls. Furthermore, there were no associations between polymorphisms and clinical characteristics, such as age at onset, disease prognosis, and HLA profiles. Our results suggest that CTLA-4 gene polymorphisms are neither conclusively related to susceptibility nor to the clinical characteristics of MS, especially in Japanese patients with conventional/classical form and clinical features identical to those of their counterparts in Western countries.