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Huntington’s disease (HD) is an autosomal dominant progressive neurodegenerative disease. Its molecular cause is a cytosine-adenine-guanine (CAG) trinucleotide repeat dynamic expansion in the huntingtin ( HTT ) gene. Alleles with 36–39 CAG-repeats are incompletely penetrant, as individuals might develop symptoms but typically with a later age of onset. When repeats are equal or greater than 40, the symptoms of the disease occur. It is considered that CAG-repeats in the “intermediate” alleles (27–35 repeats) also cause the symptoms of the HD. We present here the case of a patient who has clinical phenotype and family history of Parkinson’s disease (PD), but 27 CAG-repeats. The feature of this patient is early development of non-motor manifestations such as cognitive impairment, psychotic disorders, early dystonia in a hand, camptocormia and poor response to levodopa. It is believed that the intermediate allele of HTT gene might modify the clinical phenotype of PD in this patient.

The activating research interest in the problem of tuberculosis development is due to the increase in cases of drug resistance, coinfection with HIV and hepatitis, and the lack of an effective vaccine. However, the pathogenesis of tuberculosis remains insufficiently studied at present. A significant role is assigned to hereditary factors, as the majority of those infected with Mycobacterium tuberculosis remain resistant to tuberculosis, and only in 5—15% of cases does infection lead to the development of the disease. Despite a long history of research of genetic factors of susceptibility to tuberculosis infection — from the search for monogenic forms of immune dysfunction, associations of individual tuberculosis susceptibility genes, to the analysis of genome-wide associative studies and the assessment of the characteristics of the transcriptional profiles of patients, — the problem of obtaining clinically significant results for the identification and monitoring of risk groups remains particularly acute. The search of differentially expressed genes in groups with different status of the disease (non-infected, latent tuberculosis infection, presymptomatic state, active tuberculosis, recovery from tuberculosis, non-tuberculosis infection) led to identification of a large number of data which is not overlapped in different compared groups, different ethnic groups, in the studies of the whole blood and cellular models. Merging this wealth of data followed by its reanalysis helps to verify and update results. However, there still is a large number of questions concerning our understanding of the functioning of the human organism under the influence of M. tuberculosis. In recent years, new approaches have been used to develop test systems for the diagnosis of various forms of the disease. The review considers up to date results of expression studies of susceptibility to tuberculosis, namely, objects and approaches of research changing over time, forms of the host response to the mycobacteria infection studied, the influence of different factors on the results.

Non-motor symptoms are an essential manifestation of the clinical picture of Parkinson's disease (PD). This literature review is devoted to the study of recent advances in the field of clinical and pathophysiological aspects of the non-motor manifestations of Parkinson's disease.Aim. The aim was to study and generalize the wide range of non-motor manifestations of PD and their features in this pathology, and to reveal the pathophysiological link between motor and non-motor manifestations of the disease and the role of the neurodegenerative process in the clinical picture of PD.Materials and methods. Keywords (Parkinson's disease, non-motor symptoms, apathy, anxiety, depression, sleep disorder, pain) search in the Web of Science, Core Collection, Scopus, Pubmed databases.Results. Knowledge about the presence of PD non-motor symptoms, characteristics of their manifestations improve their diagnosis and help to choose the correct treatment strategy. This survey comprises nonmotor manifestations of PD, such as: mood disorders (apathy, anxiety, depression), impulse control disorders (dopamine disregulation syndrome), sleep disorders (insomnia, excessive daytime sleepiness, bouts of sleepiness, conduct disorder in REM phase of sleep), autonomic disorders (constipation, enuresis, thermoregulatory dysfunction, cardiovascular disorders, orthostatic hypotension), and cognitive impairment.

Background: Numerous studies have shown a link between genes involved in the immune response and infertility and miscarriage. The most significant associations have been established for the cytokine genes (IL1B, IL6, IL10, IL18), chemokine genes (CXCL9, CXCL10, CXCL11), and genes of the major histocompatibility complex HLA II class (DQA1, DQB1, DRB1). HLA genes are associated with celiac disease, a genetically determined autoimmune disorder, where male and female reproduction impairment is one of the symptoms. Aim: To assess the prevalence of polymorphic variants of the immune response genes (HLA: DQA1 DQB1, DRB1; TNF, IL10, CXCL10) in patients with reproduction disorders. Materials and methods: This pilot study involved assessment of the following gene polymorphisms: IL10 (rs1800872), TNF (rs1800629), CXCL10 (rs4386624), and HLA class II (DQA1, DQB1, DRB1) in couples (n = 220) with reproduction disorders (infertility and miscarriage). Genotyping was performed by real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) methods. The genotypes and alleles population data were used for comparison with the studied variants of the genes IL10 (rs1800872), TNF (rs1800629), and CXCL10 (rs4386624). Differences in the prevalence of alleles and genotypes were assessed by χ2 test. The differences were considered significant at p < 0.05. Haplotype diversity was calculated by the Arlequin software, version 3.5.x. Results: Compared to the populational data, there was significant re-distribution of the genotypes and alleles to the TNF gene (rs1800629) variant in men with impaired reproductive functions. No differences were found for other gene variants studied. The frequency of HLA class II gene (DQA1, DQB1, DRB1) haplotypes associated with celiac disease (DQ2 and DQ8) in the study sample was 23.8%. Conclusion: The results indicate the important role of genes associated with celiac disease in the development of reproduction disorders.

BACKGROUND: Genome-wide association studies have identified novel genetic associations for asthma, but without taking into account the role of active tobacco smoking. This study aimed to identify novel genes that interact with ever active tobacco smoking in adult onset asthma.METHODS: We performed a genome-wide interaction analysis in six studies participating in the GABRIEL consortium following two meta-analyses approaches based on 1) the overall interaction effect and 2) the genetic effect in subjects with and without smoking exposure. We performed a discovery meta-analysis including 4,057 subjects of European descent and replicated our findings in an independent cohort (LifeLines Cohort Study), including 12,475 subjects.RESULTS: First approach: 50 SNPs were selected based on an overall interaction effect at pCONCLUSIONS: Using two genome-wide interaction approaches, we identified novel polymorphisms in non-annotated intergenic regions on chromosomes 9 and 12, that showed suggestive evidence for interaction with active tobacco smoking in the onset of adult asthma.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the usefulness of the -703С/Т polymorphism in IL-5 gene, Q551R polymorphism in IL-4RA gene, and GSTM1 and GSTТ1 gene polymorphism as biological markers of bronchial asthma (BA) in children with atopic dermatitis (AD). We genotyped children with AD (n = 72; mean age, 9.4 ± 0.28 years), children with AD in combination with BA (n = 68; mean age, 7.5 ± 0.7 years) and control subjects (n = 147; mean age, 9.9 ± 0.42 years). We found the associations between BA and the -703С allele of the interleukin-5 (IL-5) gene (OR = 1.73, p = 0.013) and -703СС / 551RR genotype combination (OR = 3.15; p = 0.015) in children with AD; between the 551RR genotype of the IL-4RA gene and atopy (p < 0.05). -703CT / GSТТ1 0/0 genotype combination was found rarer in children with BA than in controls (OR = 0.15; p = 0.049). Thus, -703С/Т allele of the IL-5 gene and -703СС / 551RR genotype combination were associated with BA and could be used as valuable markers of the disease in children with AD, whereas the Q551R polymorphism in the IL-4RA gene was associated with predisposition to atopic disease and could be used for administration of preventive therapy of allergic disorder in early childhood. The -703CT / GSТТ1 0/0 genotype combination can prevent BA occurrence in children with AD.