Fulfilling the promise of immunology for human health

Anti-glomerular basement membrane (GBM) disease, a rare autoimmune disorder, is associated with HLA-DR15 genotype in Caucasian and Japanese populations. But the distribution of HLA-DRB1 alleles in Chinese patients with anti-GBM disease and their association with clinical characteristics of anti-GBM disease are to be determined. The present study analyzed the HLA-DRB1 alleles by sequence based typing in 44 Chinese patients with anti-GBM disease and 200 healthy controls. The effects of DRB1 alleles on susceptibility to anti-GBM disease were examined by a relative predispositional effects (RPEs) method. The clinical and pathological data of the patients were collected and analyzed. The DRB1⁎1501 allele was significantly associated with anti-GBM disease (p = 1.597 × 10−7). The RPEs test also showed a significant increased frequency of DRB1⁎0404 in anti-GBM disease (p = 0.037). Interestingly, the patients with DRB1⁎1501 or ⁎0404 had more crescent formation in glomeruli than those without the two alleles (p = 0.021). But the DRB1⁎0404 was rare in both patients and control groups, which indicates that the importance of the ⁎0404 allele is limited in anti-GBM disease. We conclude that the HLA-DRB1⁎1501 allele is a genetic marker for susceptibility to anti-GBM disease.