Relationship between human leukocyte antigen status and proliferative diabetic retinopathy in patients with younger-onset type 1 diabetes mellitus

PURPOSE: To investigate the relationship between human leukocyte antigen (HLA) status and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) to assess the genetic basis of PDR in younger type 1 diabetic patients. DESIGN: Retrospective, nonrandomized, comparative trial. METHODS: Patients who were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes under 30 years of age (range, 13-28) and had a disease duration of more than 10 years were studied. The patients were divided into two groups: 30 patients who had undergone vitreous surgery younger than 40 years old (the PDR group) and 50 patients without retinopathy (the non-DR group). The duration of diabetes and the level of glycemic control were matched between the two groups. The control group consisted of 50 healthy patients. HLA-A, -B, -C, -DR, and -DQ typing of blood samples was done using the standard microcytotoxicity method. RESULTS: The frequency of HLA-B62, Cw4, and DQ4 was significantly higher in the PDR group than in the non-DR group (P = .0020, P = .048, and P = .0026, respectively). The Cw4-DR4-DQ4 haplotype frequency was significantly higher in the PDR group than in the control group and the non-DR group (P =.0059). CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggests that HLA-B62, Cw4, and DQ4 may be useful for predicting the prognosis of retinopathy in patients with younger-onset type 1 diabetes. (C) 2003 by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.