Figure 2: Association of rs641738 genotype with MBOAT7 mRNA expression.

Association between MBOAT7 rs641738 genotype and hepatic (n=94) (a) and blood (n=75) (b) MBOAT7 mRNA levels. Clinical and anthropometric characteristics of these patients are shown in Supplementary Table 8. The x axis shows the genotypes at rs641738 using the dominant model of inheritance (CC=35 and CT/TT=59 in the liver biopsy cohort, and CC=23 and CT/TT=52 in the blood cohort) and the y axis shows the MBOAT7 expression level relative to GAPDH by quantitative real-time PCR. (c) Hepatic MBOAT7 mRNA levels according to hepatic inflammation. The x axis shows hepatic inflammation dichotomized as absent/mild (METAVIR score A0–A1) (n=53) or moderate/severe (METAVIR score A2–A3) (n=41), and the y axis shows hepatic MBOAT7 expression as fold change. The number of independent samples tested in each group is shown in parentheses. Each group is shown as a box plot and the median values are shown as thick dark horizontal lines. The box covers the twenty-fifth to seventy-fifth percentiles. We tested the difference in the median values among genotypes using the two-tailed Mann–Whitney tests. We plotted the box plots using Graphpad prism 5. (d) Comparison of hepatic MBOAT7 mRNA levels in hepatitis C patients with no or mild fibrosis (F0–F1) (n=45) and control (n=28). The number of independent samples tested in each group is shown in parentheses. Median and interquartile range are shown and P value was calculated using the two-tailed Mann–Whitney test.