A Role for IFITM Proteins in Restriction of Mycobacterium tuberculosis Infection

Ranjbar, Shahin; Haridas, Viraga; Jasenosky, Luke D.; Falvo, James V.; Goldfeld, Anne E.

Intriguingly, a SNP in the IFITM3 promoter (rs3888188; T > G), which reduces transcriptional activation of IFITM3, has been associated with increased susceptibility to TB in Han Chinese children (Shen et al., 2013) . A C to T SNP in the IFITM3 cDNA, which was speculated to disrupt a splice-acceptor site and produce an N-terminal truncated version of the protein, has been associated with increased severity of influenza virus infection and accelerated HIV disease (Everitt et al., 2012; Zhang et al., 2013 Zhang et al., , 2015 , although the impact of this SNP on influenza morbidity/mortality in humans (Mills et al., 2014) and the importance of N-terminal truncation of IFITM3 on the restriction of influenza virus infection (Williams et al., 2014) are still points of debate. It is of interest to determine if these or other SNPs in the genes encoding IFITM1-3 are associated with TB susceptibility in other patient populations.