Mannose-binding lectin genotype and invasive pneumococcal infection

Invasive pneumococcal disease is a serious infection that primarily affects young children and elderly or immunocompromised persons, but it also can affect healthy persons. Mannose-binding lectin (MBL) is a mediator of innate host immunity that activates the complement pathway and directly opsonizes pathogens. Variant structural codon and promoter MBL alleles have been associated with susceptibility to infections. Sixty-three Belgian patients with invasive pneumococcal disease and 162 healthy Belgian controls were genotyped for MBL alleles. We found a nonsignificant increased risk between the MBL structural codon variants (52, 54, and 57) and invasive pneumococcal disease. Combining our data with similar data from Kronberg et al. (J Infect Dis 2002;185: 1517-20) indicated that MBL structural variants contributed to a small but significant increased risk of invasive pneumococcal disease. On the other hand, the -221 and -550 promoter allele distribution and the prevalence of the combined MBL structural and promoter -221 variant alleles were not significantly different between the patient group and the control group.