HLA‐B27 and HLA‐B51 Determination in Tunisian Healthy Subjects and Patients with Suspected Ankylosing Spondylitis and Behçet's Disease

Abstract

The aim of this retrospective study is to assess the frequency of HLA-B27 and HLA-B51 in healthy subjects from the center of Tunisia and to investigate their usefulness in the diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) and Behçet's disease (BD), respectively. Microlymphocytotoxicity test was used to perform serologic HLA typing in a group of 124 healthy volunteers and a group of 365 patients suffering from clinical manifestations of AS and/or BD. HLA-B27 was found in 3.2% of healthy subjects and in 42.9% of patients with AS (P < 0.00006). HLA-B51 is, however, found in 16.1% of healthy subjects and in 30.0% of patients with BD (P > 0.05). Unlike HLA-B51, which seems to be as frequent in Tunisian patients with BD as in healthy subjects, HLA-B27 is more frequent in patients with AS than in controls. This highlights the usefulness of HLA-B27, rather than that of HLA-B51, in the diagnosis of the respective diseases.

Association of the HLA‐B27 antigen and the CTLA4 gene CT60/rs3087243 polymorphism with ankylosing spondylitis in Algerian population: A case–control study

“…A study on 100 AS Algerian patients reported a frequency of 63% (Amroun et al., ). Equivalent HLA‐B27 frequencies have been described in the North African countries: Egypt (59% (Tayel et al., )), Morocco (58% (Atouf et al., )) and Tunisia (43%, Sakly et al., ). Various ancestral genetic components in the northern Africa have been described because of a complex history of demographic events (Bekada et al., ).…”

Coexistence of Behçet’s Disease with Ankylosing Spondylitis and Familial Mediterranean Fever: A Rare Occurrence

“…10,15,16 our case report is the first observation of coexistence of these diseases. Chance occurrence of these two rare diseases in the same patient, who also has HLA-B27 positive ankylosing spondylitis, had not been reported.…”

“…Such incredible predominance of the disease is also related with HLA-B51 which is almost present in 60 to 70% of BD patients from the previous mentioned areas, 9 the frequency of HLA-B51 in Tunisian patient with BD was 30%. 10 Besides, many non-HLA genes along with environmental factors contribute to the increasing risk of the disease. Some researches have revealed that MEFV gene is one of vulnerable genes which are liable to yield BD, mainly for patients with vascular involvement, in France 11 and Turkey 12 and Israel, 13 where BD and FMF are prevalent.…”

The association of human leukocyte antigen polymorphisms with disease severity and latency period in patients with silicosis

“…The prevalence of the HLA-B51 antigen in ethnic groups varies from 0% to more than 25%. Populations with a high HLA-B51 prevalence (> 10%) are predominantly located in the Middle East, Greece, Turkey, Iran, and Japan [15]. While B51 is identified in an average of 15–20% of the healthy population in Turkey, in BD this ratio increased to 50–60%.…”