[Genetic risk markers in Graves' disease]

Graves' disease is exceptional as a disorder of stimulatory autoimmunity in comparison with all other endocrine autoimmunopathies. Research into its pathogenesis has so far focussed on the genetics next to characterisation of antibody-antigen as well as T-lymphocyte interactions. A multigenic predisposition similar to other autoimmune diseases has been proposed. Such polygenic disorders are frequent in the population and require special genetic epidemiological tools to dissect the many gene loci, where polymorphisms are readily detectable by several molecular typing assays. This review presents these tools and methods as well as the currently identified main susceptibility loci in the Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA DQA1*0501), cytotoxic T-lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA4-ala17) as well as interferon-gamma (IFN-gamma *2) regions. Most of these predisposing alleles are shared risk factors in several endocrine autoimmune diseases. Further research is required to identify those gene variants that determine the individual course of thyroid stimulation or destruction.