Lack of association between interleukin 23 receptor polymorphism p.R381Q and liver stiffness in chronic hepatitis C virus infection

Introduction: Recently genome-wide association studies identified a common variant of the interleukin 23 receptor (IL23R) gene as a novel genetic risk factor strongly associated with inflammatory bowel diseases1 and found evidence that some loci confer risk for more than one common disease2. Since the expression of TH1-related IL12 family cytokines binding to IL23R is reduced in liver fibrosis, we assessed the potential effect of the IL23R polymorphism p.R381Q (rs11209026) in patients with liver fibrosis due to chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. Methods: Patients were phenotyped employing the novel non-i…