Objective: The main purpose of this study was to investigate the class I HLA antigens and class II HLA allele frequencies in 164 patients with leukemia: 35 patients with ALL (acute lymphoid leukemia), 50 with AML (acute myeloid leukemia) and 78 with CML (chronic myeloid leukemia).
Methods: The genotyping of class I HLA was performed by microlymphocytotoxicity and of class II by PCR-SSP (polymerase chain reaction - sequence specific of primers) (One Lambda, Canoga Park, CA, USA).
Results: In patients with LLA, frequencies of HLA-B45 and HLA-B56 were higher (P = 0.02; OR = 3.13; 95%IC = 0.94-10.44; P = 0.03; OR = 3.61; 95%IC = 0.47-27.64, respectively), than in controls. In patients with AML, the frequency of HLA-B7 (P = 0.01; OR = 2.41; 95%IC = 1.25-4.67) was higher than in controls. The presence of HLA-B45 (P= 0.01; OR = 3.29; 95%IC = 1.46-7.40), HLA-DRB1*04 (P = 0.002; OR = 2.17; 95%IC = 1.36-3.46) and HLA-DRB1*08 (P = 0.004; OR = 2.36; 95%IC = 1.34-4.16) was associated to increased risk of CML developing.
Conclusion: Our results suggest that variants of HLA confer susceptibility to the same forms of leukemia, and could provide new tools for the investigation of genetics and etiology of this disease.