“…Most coeliac patients, in fact, carry the serological haplotypes DR3-DQw2 and/or DR7-DQw2 (Tosi et al, 1983;Corazza et al, 1985;Tiwari &Terasaki, 1985), whereas patients negative for these haplotypes carry DR4-DQw3 (Tosi et al, 1986), Restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis of HLA-DQ genes has shown that coeliac disease is strongly associated with a DQ A allele (Roep et al, 1988) and with a particular DQ a/P heterodimer, encoded by a combination of DQ A1 *0501 and DQ B1 *0201 alleles (Sollid et al, 1989;Bodmer, Marsh & Albert, 1990), Recently, an association with some DP B alleles has been also reported (Bugawan et al, 1989;Kagnoff e/ at., 1989;Colonna et al, 1990) but it seems to be secondary to that with DQ alleles (Spurkland et al, 1990), In order to elucidate further the genetic association between coeliac disease and HLA-DQ genes, we have analysed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification the allelic variability ofthe highly polymorphic second exon ofthe HLACorrespondence: Prof, G, R, Corazza, I Patologia Medica, Policlinico S, Orsola, Via Massarenti 9, 40138 Bologna, Italy, DQ Al gene in 20 adult coeliac patients. Since the DQw2 specificity is also present in 20-30% of Caucasian healthy subjects (Baur et at., 1984;Corazza et al, 1985), the results have been compared with those obtained in 20 HLA-D-matched healthy controls.…”