mRNA Expressions of SOCS3 Gene in Meningitis Patients

Meningitis is an inflammatory disease caused by microorganisms and viruses with various clinical symptoms, which damages the brain tissue and membranes, and which induces biochemical and cellular changes in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF). Meningitis is an infectious disease with higher rates of mortality and morbidity. The possibility of death or permanent damage to patient is considerable, mortality rate is one in ten patients and permanent damages like deafness or various brain damages are one in seven patients. Experimental animal meningitis revealed that the leukocytes infiltrated in CSF due to bacterial dissemination contributed to damage progression in brain tissue, increased brain edema and intracranial pressure. The association between gene expression of SOCS3 which is effective in repressing the JAK/STAT signal transduction pathway and meningitis disease were investigated in this study. Gene expression levels of SOCS3 in leukocytes leaked to CSF were investigated by using real-time PCR method in this study. As a result of our study, there was no difference in blood SOCS3 gene expression levels between meningitis patients and healthy controls (p>0.05). Additionally, there was no meaningful difference between SOC3 gene expression of blood and CSF samples in meningitis patients (p>0.05). Our data suggests that further molecular studies are needed and important in meningitis disease diagnosis and treatment, and in the other genes responsible for repressing of inflammatory development.