© Kamla-Raj 2002                                                                             Int J Hum Genet, 2(1): 45-48 (2002)

Frequencies of HLA-DR7 and HLA-DR4 alleles in Hungarian

asthmatic children with mite allergy

Olga Bede¹,  Kálmán Gyurkovits² and Emoke Endreffy¹

1. Paediatric Department, Albert Szent-Györgyi Medical and Pharmaceutical Center,

University of Sciences,6725 Szeged, Hungary

2. County Hospital for Chest Diseases, 7357 Mosdós, Hungary

Key Words bronchial asthma; HLA genotyping; mite allergy

Abstract  Certain combinations of alleles within HLA-DRB1,-DQA1,-DQB1 region are associated with susceptibility to allergens causing a well-defined disease as bronchial asthma. Our purpose was to study the HLA-DRB1,-DQA1,-DQB1 allelic polymorphisms in 57 patients with bronchial asthma (unrelated children 4 to 17 years of age) caused by  mite allergy and 57 unrelated non-atopic controls and 45 non-mite sensitive asthmatic children (aged 4 to 17 years). We examined the allelic polymorphisms by molecular genetic methods. We found an increased frequency (P<0.001) in the haplotype of HLA-DR7 - DQA1*0201 - DQB1*0202 among patients compared to non-atopic controls and non-mite sensitive asthmatic controls and a decreased frequency (P£0.01) of HLA-DR4 - DQA1*0301 - DQB1*0302 haplotype among patients compared to non-atopic controls. Our data suggest that HLA-DR7 seems to be predictive factor to bronchial asthma with mite-sensitive Hungarian children. We found that the haplotype of HLA-DR4 - DQA1*0301 - DQB1*0302 may be significantly implicated in the protection to the disease. We could not find any date in the literature referring to the HLA-DR7 and DR4 alleles associated with mite allergic in European population.

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