Background: Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) includes two basic categories ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's disease (CD) that the etiology of which remains unclear. Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNFα) promoter polymorphisms are a good candidate for susceptibility to IBD as there is a significant relationship between them. The main aim of this study was to assess TNFα gene polymorphisms with IBD susceptibility at positions -1031in Iranian patients.

Materials and Methods: In this case-control study, were studied 101 patients with IBD (86 ulcerative colitis, 15 Crohn's disease) and 100 healthy controls were studied. PCR-RFLP (Polymerase Chain Reaction-Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism) was used for determining of genotyping. In following, allele frequency and genotype distribution of polymorphism T> C in TNFα gene between the case and control groups were typed.

Results: The frequency of genotype TT, TC and CC among patients was 64.4%, 28.7% and 6.9% and in control group was 63%, 29% and 8%, respectively. Also, allele frequency T-1031 of TNFα gene in IBD patients was high, while there is no statistical significant(p>0.05).

Conclusion: There was no significant correlation between TNFα gene polymorphisms and susceptibility to IBD at position -1031. Our results showed that TNFα gene polymorphisms cannot be considered as a potential prognostic marker cause of IBD in Iranian population.