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[Extensive HLA class II studies in Chinese narcoleptic patients]
1Department of Respiratory Diseases, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730.
Objective:
Narcolepsy is a debilitating, lifelong sleep disorder. Its familial occurrence suggests that genetic factors may be of importance in the etiology. Narcolepsy is a very rare disease among Chinese, thus it was of interest to study the association of narcolepsy with the HLA system in Chinese narcoleptic patients.
Methods:
To explore the role of HLA-DRB genes in the development of narcolepsy, we studied 10 narcoleptic patients and 50 race matched controls in whom HLA-DR typing was performed by the method of DNA amplification with sequence-specific primers (PCR-SSP).
Results:
All narcoleptic patients were found to be of DRB1 * 1501 and DRB5 * 0101 genotype.
Conclusion:
These results indicate that HLA-DRB1 * 1501 is a better primary candidate susceptibility gene for narcolepsy in Chinese.