HLA Antigens in Malay Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus

Abstract

Many studies have shown an association between human leucocyte antigens (HLA) and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) in the various study populations. Although SLE is not an uncommon disease in the Malaysian Archipelago, and appears to affect all three major racial groups equally (i.e. Southern Chinese, Malays and Southern Indians), very little information is available on the HLA profiles in the two latter groups. In phase I of our study of the HLA profiles in Malaysian SLE patients, the HLA phenotypes (class I: A, B, C; Class II: DR, DQ) of Malay patients with confirmed SLE and 91 normal Malay controls were determined using the microcytotoxicity assay. The strong association between DR (RR 3.28, P = 0.008) concurs with that reported among Chinese and Japanese populations. Moderate to strong associations with HLA-B 7 (RR 4.99, P = 0.02) and Cw 7 (RR 2.94, P = 0.003) were also found. We believe this is the first report of the association of HLA and SLE in the Malay population.

Association of killer cell immunoglobulin-like receptor and human leucocyte antigen-Cw gene combinations with systemic lupus erythematosus

“…HLA-C alleles, the ligands of KIR2D genes, are highly polymorphic; these loci segregate to KIR genes, and NK cells can express KIRs for which there is no known HLA ligand present. In this study, we showed that HLA-Cw*07 was present more frequently in SLE patients than in healthy subjects, which is consistent with the findings reported by Kong et al [28]. HLA-C is the classic HLA-I gene, which was on the short arm of human chromosome 6, between HLA-A and B.…”

“…In this study, we showed that HLA‐Cw*07 was present more frequently in SLE patients than in healthy subjects, which is consistent with the findings reported by Kong et al . . HLA‐C is the classic HLA‐I gene, which was on the short arm of human chromosome 6, between HLA‐A and B.…”

HLA-A*11 and novel associations in Malays and Chinese with systemic lupus erythematosus

“…In Caucasian populations, this allele frequency was significantly increased in Bulgarian and Russian populations [17]. In the two previous studies in Malay SLE patients, only one of them looked at HLA-A1 but found no association [9]. A previous study in Hong Kong SLE patients also showed no association of SLE with HLA-A alleles [18].…”

“…The only three previous publications on HLA associations in Malay [9,10] and Chinese [11] Malaysian SLE patients examined a small number of HLA loci. His study was aimed at examining a fuller set of HLA loci associations in a population of Malay and Chinese SLE patients.…”

Preliminary report on class II histocompatibility (HLA-DR and DQ) antigens in a subpopulation of Arab patients with systemic lupus erythematosus

“…Some were found to bear DR‐7, for example, 5 while others did not express either DR‐2 or DR‐3 6 . The HLA–DR‐2 or its split, predominantly DR‐15, were more common in some Caucasians, 1 Asians, 7 African Americans 8 and South African Black patients 9 …”