Thus, these results suggest that the TLR2 signal pathway plays a critical role in the alteration of cytokine profiles in PBMC from leprosy patients and the TLR2 mutation Arg677Trp provides a mechanism for the poor cellular immune response associated with lepromatous leprosy.
Genotyping results after direct PCR sequencing showed that the TLR2 Arg677Trp polymorphism associated with lepromatous leprosy in the Korean population is not a true polymorphism of the TLR2 gene and has resulted from the variation present in the 93% homologous duplicated region of TLR2 exon 3 present approximately 23 kb upstream.