No association with HLA class II alleles in Swedish patients with cutaneous manifestations of Lyme borreliosis

Abstract

The possibility of an association between manifestations of Lyme borreliosis and HLA class II alleles has been investigated with varying results. In the present study, we used genomic typing techniques to determine the DR, DQ and DP allele frequencies in 29 patients with erythema migrans and 36 patients with acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans. We did not find a significant deviation from controls in the distribution of the HLA class II alleles in any of these disease manifestations, nor in the subgroup of 8 patients with acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans and long-standing arthritis. With the additional information obtained by the typing techniques used, our results are thus in accord with those studies where no association between the development of the late disease manifestation acrodermatitis chronica atrophicans and HLA class II alleles has been found.