Clinical and experimental immunology
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Clin. Exp. Immunol. · Aug 2005
High levels of glucocorticoid receptors in patients with active Crohn's disease may predict steroid resistance.
Up to 20% of Crohn's disease (CD) patients respond poorly to glucocorticoids (GC). A product of an alternative splicing of the glucocorticoid receptor (GR) premRNA, GRbeta, may play a role as a dominant inhibitor of the glucocorticoid response. Increasing evidence suggests that inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-18 alternate the splicing of the primary transcript between the two isoforms GRbeta and GRalpha in hGR gene of CD patients. ⋯ High levels of hGRbeta might be connected to GC resistance. IL-18 might participate in the alternative splicing of the hGR preliminary mRNA of CD patients. The results support the theory that augmented hGRbeta mRNA expression level in PBMC is connected with GC-resistance of CD patients.