Immunohistochemistry Study of Expression of TNF-?, TRAF-1, and TRAF-2 in Patients Suffer from Ulcerative Colitis

Background: Ulcerative colitis (UC) is a chronic inflammatory disease of unknown causes. It has involved the inflammatory process of the mucosa and sometimes the submucosa of the large intestinal tract. There are a several theories involve role of the immune mechanisms and cell signals that lead to activation of many intracellular adapter proteins and other markers, which in turn trigger an inflammatory process and death of many colonocytes. Objective: investigation of the expression of TNF-?, TRAF1and TRAF2 in Iraqi UC patients and also indirectly, explain the direction of intestinal cell signaling toward cell survival or cell death. Material and Method: A case-control study was conducted at the City of Al-Najaf Al-Ashraf using 56 and 30 individuals of both genders for Patients and Control groups with an overall age range of 18-75 years old. All sera (with negative Epstein - Barr virus (EBV) agglutination test) of all subjects were monitored for Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha (TNF), TNF Receptor Associated Factor-1 (TRAF-1), and TNF Receptor Associated Factor-2 (TRAF-2) expression by Immunostaining Method. The Data was analyzed by using spss (chi-squire test) program (version 22). Results: TNF-?, TRAF-1 and TRAF-2 expression were significantly differences in inflamed tissues of UC patients (all at score 4 were 78.6%, 44.6%, 62.5% respectively) than those in control (at Score 3 was 73.3%, at score 2 was 60%, and at score 1 was 56.7% respectively) (P value <0.05). Conclusion: TNF-?, TRAF-1,and TRAF-2 shown to have an adequate colonoscopic biopsies biomarker for UC and it possibly use as a sensitive assays for monitoring severity of mucosa inflammation. Recommendation: More work is needed to determine the precise molecular mechanism of TNF-?, TRAF-1and TRAF-2 signaling as well as identify the role of TNF-Rs in such mechanisms.