Relationship between autoimmune hepatitis and HLA-DR4 and DR®allelic sequences in the third hypervariable region in Chinese

Abstract

AIM To analyze the association of HLA-DRB1 with autoimmune hepatitis (AIH) in patients from China.METHODS In 32 patients and 48 healthy controls, polymerase chain reaction amplification with sequencespecific primers (PCR-SSP) was performed to examine the association of certain alleles or polymorphic sequences of HLA-DRB1 with AIH.RESULTS HLA-DRB1 typing by PCR-SSP showed that DR4 had a significantly increased frequency among patients with AIH versus healthy control (46.9% versus 20.8%; relative risk = 3.35, P = 0.014). In subtypes of DR4, there was a trend of increase in the gene frequency of DRB1 *0405 in patients with AIH versus healthy controls (21.9% vs 6.3%, P = 0.04, but P c = 0.08). In addition, a significant increase was found in the alleles frequency encoding QRRAA from the third hyperpolymorphic region of DR4 in the patients with AIH (86.7% of DR4 positive patients vs 40.0% in DR4 positive controls, P = 0.016, Pc = 0.028, RR = 9.75).CONCLUSION AIH in Chinese is associated with HLA-DR4. There is a relationship between QRRAA sequence within the third hyperpolymorphic region of the DRB allele and AIH in Chinese.Subject headings hepatitis, autoimmune/immunology; HLA-DR antigen/genetics; alleles; sequence analysis; polymerase chain reaction Ma X, Qiu DK. Relationship between autoimmune hepatitis and HLA-DR4 and DR β allelic sequences in the third hypervariable region in Chinese. World J Gastroenterol, 2001;7(5):718-721