The present case-control study inspected the association between seven single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of IL4 (IL4<sub>-1098</sub>: rs2243248, IL4<sub>-590</sub>: rs2243250, and IL4<sub>-33</sub>: rs2070874), IL4RA (IL4RA<sub>+1902</sub>: rs1801275), and IL10 (IL10<sub>-1082</sub>: rs1800896, IL10<sub>-819</sub>: rs1800871, and IL10<sub>-592</sub>: rs1800872) genes and MS in Iraqi patients.
The meta-analysis indicates that the T allele, CT and TT genotype of polymorphism of IL4 rs2243250 (C/T) may reduce the risk of MS in Caucasian populations, while polymorphisms of IL4 I3(709)*VNTR and IL4R rs1801275 may not associated with risk of MS in Caucasian populations.
It was also observed a significant (p=0.016) increase for the IL4R* Q551R CC genotype in AF-MS compared to those of Caucasian ethnicity (AF-MS= 21.62%; CA-MS= 4.35%).
We applied the multifactor dimensionality reduction (MDR) test to detect epistasis, and identified single-IL4R(Q576R)- and three-IL4R(Q576R), IL5RA(-80), CD14(-260)- locus association models that predict MS risk with 75-76% accuracy (P<0.01).