Human leukocyte antigen-DQB1 alleles are not associated with schizophrenia in Kuwaiti Arabs

Schizophrenia is among the most severe and debilitating of psychiatric disorders and has a complex mode of inheritance. A susceptibility locus has been identified on chromosome 6 and some association studies involving human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes have reported diverse results. The objective of the present study was to determine if there is an association between HLA-DQB1 alleles and schizophrenia in Kuwaiti Arabs. The frequency of HLA-DQB1 alleles was determined in a cohort of 195 Kuwaiti Arabs consisting of 81 schizophrenia patients and 114 ethnically matched healthy controls, using a polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific primers method. A total of nine DQB1 alleles were identified in this Kuwaiti cohort. The most prevalent DQB1 alleles in Kuwaiti schizophrenia patients were *0601 (28%), *0201 (23%) and *0501 (16%), respectively. However, no significant difference in the allele frequency was detected between schizophrenia patients and the controls. The DQB1*0602 allele, which has been negatively associated in African-Americans in previous reports, was not detected in the present Kuwaiti schizophrenia patients or controls.