title: Association of HLA-DRB alleles and pulmonary tuberculosis in North Chinese patients.
abstract: Human leukocyte antigen (HLA) plays a central role in the regulation of the immune response. HLA class II molecules are essential for T cell-mediated adaptive immunity and present peptide antigens to CD4(+) T cells. Because of its important role in the immune response and its high degree of polymorphism, the HLA system is associated with many diseases. We examined the polymorphisms of HLA-DRB alleles and the sequences of the HLA-DRB promoter region in 97 unrelated patients with pulmonary tuberculosis and in 62 unrelated normal controls of the Han nationality from North China, using PCR with sequence-specific primers and PCR direct sequencing. We found that the frequency of HLA-DRB1*15 was significantly higher in the pulmonary tuberculosis group than in the healthy control group. The P value was 0.001, and the odds ratio was 3.793. The pulmonary tuberculosis group had the same HLA-DRB1 promoter region sequences as the control group. We concluded that the HLA-DRB1*15 allele is associated with pulmonary tuberculosis in the Han nationality from North China. The HLA-DRB1 promoter region sequences had no association with the development of pulmonary tuberculosis.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Immunology Laboratory, Beijing Tuberculosis and Thoracic Tumor Research Institute, P.R. China. shiguangli878@sina.com
authors.forename: G L
authors.initials: GL
authors.lastname: Shi
authors.forename: X L
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Hu
authors.forename: L
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: C L
authors.initials: CL
authors.lastname: Rong
authors.forename: Y L
authors.initials: YL
authors.lastname: Guo
authors.forename: C X
authors.initials: CX
authors.lastname: Song
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001483:Base Sequence; D002681:China; D005260:Female; D005787:Gene Frequency; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D005838:Genotype; D006684:HLA-DR Antigens / Q000235:genetics*; D059811:HLA-DRB1 Chains; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D011110:Polymorphism, Genetic; D011401:Promoter Regions, Genetic; D014397:Tuberculosis, Pulmonary / Q000235:genetics*; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D006684:HLA-DR Antigens; D059811:HLA-DRB1 Chains; C507799:HLA-DRB1*15 antigen