Relationship of HLA to major affective disorder not supported

A recently published report (Weitkamp et al., 1981) concludes that a major susceptibility locus for depression is located in the HLA region of chromosome 6. This conclusion was based on increased sharing of HLA haplotypes in affected sib pairs and nonrandom segregation of HLA types and illness in families. However, both of these findings were true only for specific subsamples of the data. Here, we suggest that the criteria used to subdivide the data are not theoretically justified. In addition, we show that we cannot replicate their findings in our own new data. Our data do not support any relationship of HLA type to affective disorders.