Association of Toll-like receptor 2 polymorphisms with National Institute of Health Stroke Scale scores of ischemic stroke patients.

Toll-like receptor 2 (TLR2) has been shown to have an important role in the postischemic inflammatory response and to contribute to ischemic brain damage. In this study, we investigated whether coding region single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the TLR2 gene were associated with ischemic stroke (IS) and with clinical phenotypes in IS patients. We genotyped two SNPs (rs3804099 [Asn199Asn] and rs3804100 [Ser450Ser]) using direct sequencing in 202 IS patients and 291 control subjects. No SNPs of the TLR2 gene were found to be associated with IS. However, in analysis of clinical phenotypes, we found that rs3804099 was associated with the National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) scores of IS patients in codominant (TC vs. TT, p = 0.0005; CC vs. TT, p = 0.0007) and dominant models (TC/CC vs. TT, p = 0.0001). Also, rs3804100 revealed significant association in codominant (TC vs. TT, p = 0.0002; CC vs. TT, p = 0.008) and dominant models (TC/CC vs. TT, p < 0.0001). In allele frequency analysis, we also found that the C alleles of rs3804099 and rs3804100 were associated with higher NIHSS scores (p = 0.0003 in rs3804099; p = 0.0001 in rs3804100). Our results suggest that TLR2 may be related to severe IS.