Abstract
Background and objective
Multiple sclerosis (MS) has been consistently associated with the HLA-DR2 haplotype
and particularly with the HLA-DRB1*15 allele. Epistatic interactions between both
parental alleles in the DRB1 loci have been shown to modify the MS susceptibility
risk. This study investigated the frequencies of various HLA-DRB1 genotypes, their
impact on MS susceptibility and their correlation with the clinical severity in a
Spanish population.
Methods
A genotype was considered as the combination of the two parental DRB1 alleles. We
compared the frequencies of the genotypes in a sporadic MS population (n=380) with those of an unrelated healthy control cohort (n=1088). We correlated the different genotypes with the age at onset, gender distribution,
symptoms at onset, course of the disease and progression severity by means of the
time to reach the progressive phase and EDSS scores of 3 and 6.
Results
We found 81 different genotypes. There were four different MS-predisposing genotypes.
Three of them contained the DRB1*15 allele (DRB1*03/15, DRB1*04/15, and DRB1*08/15)
and the fourth was homozygote for the DRB1*03 allele. The highest odds ratio was found
with the genotype DRB1*08/15 (OR=3.88, 95% CI=1.83–8.26, p<0.01), followed by DRB1*03/03 (OR=3.15, 95% CI=1.93–5.14, p<0.01), DRB1*03/15 (OR=2.72, 95% CI=1.88–3.94, p<0.01) and DRB1*04/15 (OR=2.54, 95% CI=1.64–3.98, p<0.01). The DRB1*01/04 and the DRB1*15/15 genotypes were associated with a shorter
time to reach an EDSS score of 6.
Conclusions
Our results show the importance of epistatic interactions among the HLA-DRB1 alleles,
modifying the risk for MS as well as its clinical severity.
Keywords
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: September 02, 2010
Accepted:
July 29,
2010
Received in revised form:
July 26,
2010
Received:
June 1,
2010
Identification
Copyright
© 2010 Elsevier B.V. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
