Comparison of DR beta 1 alleles from diabetic and normal individuals

Insulin-dependent diabetes (IDD) is positively associated with HLA-D proteins. A critical question is whether or not sequence differences within the HLA-D coding region are the same or different in diabetics and normal individuals of the same haplotype. We have isolated both DR beta 1 alleles from a Dw4/LD MN2 cDNA library and compared them to DR beta 1 genes isolated from normal individuals of the same Dw phenotype. We found no nucleotide differences in the coding region between the normal and diabetic alleles of DR beta 1 suggesting to us that DNA differences other than the DR beta 1 coding region may account for the observed association of HLA-D and diabetes.