Investigation of the molecular mechanisms affecting the severity of inflammation in terms of genomic and gene expression levels in meningitis patients

Meningitis is an inflammatory disease caused by microorganisms and viruses with various clinical symptoms, which damages the brain tissue and membranes, and which induces biochemical and cellular changes in cerebrospinal fluid. Although it is not so prevalent, meningitis is still the most serious contagious disease for normal hosts. The possibility of death or permanent damage to patient is considerable, mortality rate is one in ten patients and permanent damages like deafness or various brain damages are one in seven patients. Experimental animal meningitis revealed that the leukocytes inflitrated in cerebrospinal fluid due to bacterial dissemination contributed to damage progression in brain tissue, increased brain edema and intracranial pressure. In this study, the importance of molecular mechanisms affecting the severity of inflammation at genomic and gene expression levels in meningitis patients was investigated. The genes effective in inflammatory response like iNOS, eNOS, nNOS, and COX2 were included in study. Additionally, the expression levels of SOCS3 and IL-10 genes, and 3 different polymorphic regions in IL-10 gene?s promoter with the disease association were investigated. This preliminary results revealed that the eNOS and IL-10 gene expression in blood and cerebrospinal fluid samples from patients were significantly higher than control group. However, there were no differences in terms of polymorphism in promoter region between two groups. Our study is the first in literature for investigating the inflitrating leukocytes in cerebrospinal fluid at the gene expression level. Besides, SOCS3, COX2, iNOS, and nNOS genes expression levels were no different significantly in both groups. The significant increase of IL-10 and eNOS gene expression in meningitis patients suggests that the genes involved in inflammatory response were under tight repressive control. These preliminary findings revealed to continuation of advanced studies in meningitis diagnosis and treatment, also suggest the importance of the inhibitory activities in inflammatory response.