[A study of the association between HLA phenotype and serum concentration of soluble HLA class I]

We investigated the association between the phenotypes of human leucocyte antigens (HLA) class I on the surface of lymphocytes and serum concentrations of soluble HLA (sHLA) in normal and Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected subjects. Serum concentrations of sHLA inn normal subjects with HLA-A 24 were significantly higher than those in such subject without HLA-A 24. The similar relation was found in HIV infected subjects whose levels of sHLA significantly increased compared with that of normal subjects. These results might suggest that the mechanism which causes the increase in secretion of sHLA in HIV infected subjects does not change the association between HLA phenotype and serum concentration of sHLA.