Abstract
Meningococcal meningitis (MM) is a severe central nervous system (CNS) infection that occurs primarily in children. MM can damage brain areas associated with hearing, learning, reasoning, focus, and memory. Genetic changes, including single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), which compromise pathogen recognition increase the risk and severity of MM. There is little data on how the variation in the frequency of the rs4986790 polymorphism in the Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) gene may affect the population of Saudi Arabia. This study sought to determine the allelic frequency and distribution of the TLR4 rs4986790 A/G polymorphism in the Saudi population and compare the data to other global populations. Data from epidemiological studies conducted in various ethnic groups were extracted using PUBMED (Medline) and similar web databases. An estimated 5.88% of the Saudi population harbors the TLR4 rs4986790 G variant allele. This differed significantly from the frequencies in populations in China (p=0.0002), Japan (p=0.0001), Korea (p=0.0001), and Mexico (p=0.01). The TLR4 rs4986790 polymorphism variant allele has a unique pattern in the Saudi population, which may be the result of racial differences. These findings could assist in the risk assessment of people harboring the TLR4 +896 GG genotype susceptible to MM in the Saudi population.