Relationships of Human Leukocyte Antigen-A, -B, -DRB1 Alleles, and Haplotypes in 129 Ethnic Turkish Patients With Acute Myeloblastic Leukemia

Objective: To evaluate the frequencies of HLA class I (A, B) and class II (DRB1) alleles in acute myeloblastic leukemia (AML) and to compare them with the frequencies of those alleles in unrelated, healthy ethnic Turkish control subjects. Method: We investigated the relationship of HLA alleles in 129 ethnic Turkish patients with AML and 126 unrelated, healthy, ethnic Turkish controls using the polymerase chain reaction with sequence-specific oligonucleotide probes (PCR-SSOP) method via Luminex technology. Results: Allele frequencies of HLA-A*23, HLA-A*68, HLA-B*13, HLA-B*40, and HLA-DRB1*01 were lower in patients with AML compared with control individuals (P =.04, P =.02, P =.005, P = 02, and P =.02, respectively). In contrast, the HLA-DRB1*15 allele frequency was higher than in the controls (P =.01). The most commonly observed haplotype was A*01/B*08/DRB1*03 (5.4% vs 0.8%; P =.03) in patients with AML. In contrast, the most commonly observed haplotype was A*02/B*35/DRB1*04 (2.3% vs 3.2%) in controls. We could not find any haplotypes negatively associated with AML. Also, the homozygosity of HLA-A*01 and HLA-A*02 alleles were higher in patients with AML compared with controls (P =.046; P =.001, respectively). Conclusions: The HLA-DRB1*15 allele, the A*01/B*08/DRB1*03 haplotypes, and the homozygosity of HLA-A*01 and HLA-A*02 may play a presumptive predisposing factor in AML. Also, the HLA-A*23, HLA-A*68, HLA-B*13, HLA-B*40, and HLA-DRB1*01 alleles have been found to be negatively associated with AML.