The Frequency of Human Leukocyte Antigen Class I and II Alleles and the Relationship Between Haplotypes in Gilaks Population of Iran

Background: The Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) is the most polymorphic region in human genome. Moreover, HLA haplotype frequencies are largely used in transplantation, the treatment of autoimmune diseases, and population-based studies. The present study aimed to determine HLA-A, -B, -DR alleles and haplotype frequencies in 88 unrelated donors of Iranian Gilak ethnic group, by Polymerase Chain Reaction with Sequence-Specific Primer (PCR-SSP) assay. The study findings were compared with previous reports on HLA alleles of different Iranian ethnics. Materials and Methods: The blood samples were collected from 88 donors of the Gilak ethnicity. Deoxyribonucleic Acid (DNA) of the samples were extracted. Then, we performed PCR and electrophoresis. The frequency of different alleles was analyzed using software. Results: Our obtained results suggested that the most frequent alleles for HLA-A were A*02 (24.4%), A*11 (17.6%), and A*03 (14.2%), and the same for HLA-B were B*35 (26.7%), B*51 (12.5%), and B*52 (11.4%), and for HLA-DRB1 were DRB1*11 (14.1%), DRB1*01 (13.5%), and DRB1*04 (11.8%). In addition, the most common three-locus haplotypes were A02:B35:DRB01 (9.1%), A68:B49:DRB14 (6.2%), and A11:B51:DRB04 (5.1%) among the studied group. Conclusion: Despite some differences, we found a strong relationship in the allelic variation between Gilak ethnicity and other Iranian and Caucasians ethnics.