[Association of gene HLA-class I with leukemia]

This study was aimed to investigate the corelation between the HLA (human leukocyte antigen) genes and susceptibility of leukeamia. 605 patients with leukeamia including 189 ALL, 184 AML and 232 CML were selected for this investigation. 900 normal umbilical cord blood samples from umbilical cord blood bank were used as control population compared to the leukemia patients. HLA-A, B, C typing was done by polymerase chain reaction with sequence-specific primers (SSP-PCR). The results showed that frequencies of HLA-A*26, A*68, B*56 in ALL patients were higher (4.46%, 2.65%, 1.17%), as compared with controls (2.31%, 0.95%, 0.22%), HLA-CW*06 in ALL patients was lower (3.64%), as compared with control (11.65%). In AML patients HLA-A*01 (9.41%), B*37 (3.60%) was higher and A*33 (3.60%), B*51 (4.73%) were lower than those in controls (3.57%, 1.75% and 7.64%, 7.93%). HLA-A*32, B*27, B*44, B*54, B*55 (2.18%, 3.96%, 5.06%, 4.63%, 2.84%) in CML patients were higher than those in control (0.84%, 2.04%, 3.07%, 2.44%, 1.29%). These results suggested that positive association may exist between certain HLA-class I genes and leukemias. These preliminary data may be useful for further study on the mechanisms of leukemia pathogenesis.