AB0004 HLA association of behçet’s disease in HLA-B51negative german and turkish patients

Objectives Behçet’s disease (BD) as systemic vasculitis of unknown etiology is associated with HLA-B*51 in different European and Asian populations. HLA-A*26 was claimed as additional BD susceptibility marker in Japanese and Greek patients independent of HLA-B*51. This study was performed to test for HLA-A associations in German and Turkish BD populations. HLA-B*51 negative BD patients were compared with respective control populations. Methods 62 German and 44 Turkish patients lacking HLA-B*51 were analyzed in comparison to healthy German (N=1500) and Turks (N=77) negative for B*51. HLA-A/B genotypes were determined by SSOP (Luminex Corp.) Fisher’s exact test and Odds ratio (OR) were used for statistical evaluation. Results HLA-A*26 was significantly more frequent in German patients (14.52% patients vs. 5.9% healthy Germans, chi-square =6,07, OR =2,69, p