Research article

Variation of the Myelin Oligodendrocyte Glycoprotein gene is not primarily associated with multiple sclerosis in the Sardinian population

Maria Giovanna Marrosu¹ , Raffaele Murru¹ , Gianna Costa¹ , Maria Cristina Melis¹ , Marcella Rolesu¹ , Lucia Schirru¹ , Elisabetta Solla¹ , Stefania Cuccu¹ , Maria Antonietta Secci¹ , Michael B Whalen³ , Eleonora Cocco¹ , Maura Pugliatti² , Stefano Sotgiu² , Giulio Rosati² and Francesco Cucca³

¹  Centro Sclerosi Multipla, Dipartimento di Scienze Neurologiche e Cardiovascolari, University of Cagliari, Italy

²  Istituto di Neurologia Clinica, Facoltà di Medicina e Chirurgia, University of Sassari, Italy

³  Dipartimento di Scienze Biomediche, University of Sassari, Italy

author email corresponding author email

BMC Genetics 2007, 8:25doi:10.1186/1471-2156-8-25

Published:	17 May 2007

Abstract

Background

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is consistently associated with particular HLA-DRB1-DQB1 haplotypes. However, existing evidence suggests that variation at these loci does not entirely explain association of the HLA region with the disease. The MOG locus is a prime positional and functional candidate for such additional predisposing effects but the analysis is complicated by the strong, albeit labyrinthine pattern of linkage disequilibrium in the region. Here we have assessed the association of MOG variation with MS in the Sardinian population to see if it represents an independent contributor to MS predisposition.

Results

After re-sequencing the MOG gene in 21 healthy parents of MS patients we detected 134 variants, 33 of which were novel. A set of 40 informative SNPs was then selected and assessed for disease association together with 1 intragenic microsatellite in an initial data set of 239 MS families. This microsatellite and 11 SNPs were found to be positively associated with MS, using the transmission disequilibrium test, and were followed up in an additional 158 families (total families analysed = 397). While in these 397 families, 8 markers showed significant association with MS, through conditional tests we determined that these MOG variants were not associated with MS independently of the main DRB1-DQB1 disease associations.

Conclusion

These results indicate that variation within the MOG gene is not an important independent determinant of MS-inherited risk in the Sardinian population.