Association Between HLA‐E 0101 Homozygosity and Recurrent Miscarriage in Egyptian Women

The objective was to investigate the frequency of human leucocyte antigen (HLA)‐E alleles in Egyptian women with and without recurrent miscarriage (RM) to evaluate their role on the maintenance of pregnancy. A case–control study was adopted. HLA‐E gene polymorphism typing was carried out by restriction fragment length polymorphism for 108 women with RM and 120 fertile female controls. The frequency of HLA‐E *0101 allele was higher in patients with RM and HLA‐E*0103 allele was higher in fertile controls, and the difference was statistically significant (P = 0.003, Pc = 0.006). HLA‐E*0101/0101 genotype was the most frequent genotype in patients (45.4%), followed by HLA‐E*0101/0103 (44.4%) and finally HLA‐E*0103/0103 genotype (10.2%). The difference in the frequency of HLA‐E*0101/0101 homozygous genotype in patients with RM compared with that in the fertile controls was statistically significant (OR =2.02, 95% CI = 1.13–3.62, P = 0.011, Pc = 0.033). We found an increased frequency of homozygosity for HLA‐E*0101 in Egyptian women with RM. HLA‐E*0101 homozygosity may thus be a risk factor for RM.