Relationships of human leukocyte antigen-A,-B,-DRB1 alleles, and haplotypes in 129 ethnic Turkish patients with acute myeloblastic leukemia

Abstract

Objective: To evaluate the frequencies of HLA class I (A, B) and class II (DRB1) alleles in acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) and to compare them with the frequencies of those alleles in unrelated, healthy ethnic Turkish control subjects. Method: We investigated the relationship of HLA alleles in 129 ethnic Turkish patients with AML and 126 unrelated, healthy, ethnic Turkish controls using the polymerase chain reaction with sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes (PCR-SSOP) method via Luminex technology. Results: Allele frequencies of HLA-A∗23, HLA-A∗68, HLA-B∗13, HLA-B∗40, and HLA-DRB1∗01 were lower in patients with AML compared with control individuals (P =.04, P =.02, P =.005, P = 02, and P =.02, respectively). In contrast, the HLA-DRB1∗15 allele frequency was higher than in the controls (P =.01). The most commonly observed haplotype was A∗01/B∗08/DRB1∗03 (5.4% vs 0.8%; P =.03) in patients with AML. In contrast, the most commonly observed haplotype was A∗02/B∗35/DRB1∗04 (2.3% vs 3.2%) in controls. We could not find any haplotypes negatively associated with AML. Also, the homozygosity of HLA-A∗01 and HLA-A∗02 alleles were higher in patients with AML compared with controls (P =.046; P =.001, respectively). Conclusions: The HLA-DRB1∗15 allele, the A∗01/B∗08/DRB1∗03 haplotypes, and the homozygosity of HLA-A∗01 and HLA-A∗02 may play a presumptive predisposing factor in AML. Also, the HLA-A∗23, HLA-A∗68, HLA-B∗13, HLA-B∗40, and HLA-DRB1∗01 alleles have been found to be negatively associated with AML.