The association between CCL2 polymorphisms and drug-resistant epilepsy in Chinese children.

ABSTRACT

The treatment of drug-resistant epilepsy remains a major challenge, affecting approximately 30% of epilepsy patients. More recently, immunity and inflammation are considered to be key elements of epilepsy. Targeting brain inflammation may represent a novel therapeutic strategy for epilepsy and refractory epilepsy. In this study, we investigated the association of a tag SNP of the CCL2 gene, rs1024611 (originally designated as -2578G>A or -2518G>A) with drug-resistant epilepsy in Chinese children with epilepsy. We enrolled 484 epilepsy patients, including 98 drug-resistant patients and 386 drug-responsive patients. The rs1024611 was genotyped by PCR-RPLP. The rs1024611 AA genotype was associated with a greater susceptibility to drug-resistant epilepsy (p=0.008; OR=2.51, 95% CI 1.33-4.72), adjusted for age, sex, and seizure type, and the association remained significant after Bonferroni correction for multiple testing (p<0.05). Our results demonstrate that the CCL2 genetic polymorphism is associated with drug-resistant epilepsy in Chinese paediatric patients.