Here, we used the Rb-E2F pathway in mammalian cell in response to growth factor as another example to verify this correlation. Recently, we found that in apoptosis pathway of mammalian cell, mutations that cause large variations on the bifurcation point are more probably oncogenic mutations. Oncogenic mutations are often found focused on one or more important pathways which indicate that it is meaningful to investigate oncogenic mutations and oncogenic mechanisms from the point of view of biological network. It has long been known that formation of all sorts of tumors is largely owing to the genomic variations. All of these findings suggested that IL-23 may play an important role in the development of GD, and the IL-23A gene is a genetic risk marker for GD in Han Chinese population. The distribution of rs11171806 genotype was also investigated in subgroups according to the age and gender. We also performed an association study with the IL-23 gene polymorphism rs11171806 in both cohorts, in Shanghai cohorts, the frequencies of rs11171806 alleles were strongly different between Graves’ disease patients (G 95.7% and A 4.3%) and healthy controls (G 97.7% and A 2.3%) ( P = 2.6 × 10 −3, OR = 1.93 (95% CI: 1.25–2.97)), and in Xiamen cohorts, the proportion of individuals carrying the A allele of rs11171806 was the same significantly higher in Graves’ disease patients than in controls. Moreover in the subgroup analysis, higher concentrations of IL-23 were identified in patients of older age (⩾40 years) and female gender.

The serum concentration of IL-23 in GD patients was measured significantly higher than in health controls. The initial Shanghai cohort consisted of 712 unrelated patients with GD and 705 healthy control subjects, and the replication cohort from Xiamen Island included 433 patients with GD and 410 healthy control subjects. Two independent Chinese cohorts were used to study the genetic association between the interleukin-23A ( IL-23A) gene polymorphism (rs11171806) and susceptibility to Graves’ disease (GD).

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