HLA system and testicular germinative tumours

In 62 patients with testicular germinative tumours and 301 healthy unrelated subjects, 23 HLA antigens of A and B loci were tested. In the group of 40 seminomas the incidence of HLA-Bw35 antigen and in 22 patients with non-seminomas (embryonal carcinomas, teratocarcinoma and mixed forms) the frequency of HLA-A 10 antigen were significantly higher (27.50 vs. 14.28% in the controls, p greater than 0.025; 36.36 vs. 15.28%, p less than 0.025). After correction by multiplying p by the number of typed antigens there was no statistically significant result any more. The causes of dubious results of the studies about the association between HLA and malignancies are discussed.