Allele and haplotype frequencies for HLA-DQ in Iranian celiac disease patients

AIM:To assess the distribution of human leukocyteantigen(HLA)-DQ2 and-DQ8 in Iranian celiac disease(CD)patients and compare them to healthy Iranian controls.METHODS:To predict the HLA-DQA1 and-DQB1genes,we used six previously reported HLA-tagging single nucleotide polymorphism to determine HLA genotypes in 59 Iranian patients with‘biopsy-confirmed’CD and in 151 healthy Iranian individuals.To test the transferability of the method,50 cases and controls were also typed using a commercial kit that identifies individual carriers of DQ2,DQ7 and DQ8 alleles.RESULTS:In this pilot study 97%of CD cases(n=57)and 58%of controls(n=87)were carriers of HLADQ2 and/or HLA-DQ8 heterodimers,either in the homozygous or heterozygous state.The HLA-DQ pattern of these 57 CD patients:heterozygous DQ2.2(n=14)and homozygous DQ2.2(n=1),heterozygous DQ2.5(n=33)and homozygous DQ2.5(n=8),heterozygous DQ8(n=13)and homozygous DQ8(n=2).Two CD patients were negative for both DQ2 and DQ8(3%).CONCLUSION:The prevalence of DQ8 in our CD population was higher than that reported in other populations(25.4%).As reported in other populations,our results underline the primary importance of HLA-DQ alleles in the Iranian population’s susceptibility to CD.