Microsatellite GT Polymorphism in Intron 2 of Human Toll-like Receptor (TLR) 2 Gene and Susceptibility to Periodontitis

As pattern recognition receptor, Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2 is a signal molecule essential for the cellular response to Porphyromonas gingivalis. A recently described guanine-thymine (GT) repeat microsatellite polymorphism of the human TLR2 gene leads to impaired promotor activity. A total of 380 patients with chronic periodontitis and 590 unrelated healthy control individuals of Caucasian descent were genotyped for the GT repeat microsatellite polymorphism of the TLR2 gene. The mutations were identified with polymerase chain reaction followed by sizing of GT repeat length. The number of GT repeats ranged from 13 to 29 in both study groups. There was no significant difference between periodontitis patients and healthy controls regarding the frequency of GT repeats (p = 0.365). Subclassification of alleles into three subclasses (S allele, M allele, and L allele) revealed no significant association (p = 0.810). Moreover, also the comparison of the summarized prevalence of S and L alleles (high promotor activity) with that of the M allele (low promotor activity) was not significantly different among study groups (p = 0.377). The susceptibility to chronic periodontitis was not associated with the functional effective GT repeat microsatellite polymorphism in the human TLR2 gene.