HLA in a cohort of Brazilian patients with sarcoidosis.

Sarcoidosis is a multisystem granulomatous disorder of unknown etiology. Hereditary etiology has been proposed as a cause of the sarcoidosis, and some Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) alleles have been related to the diagnosis or severity of the disease. Löfgren's syndrome has been linked to patients with the DRB103 allele, and non-resolving disease has been associated with the DRB107, DRB114 and DRB115 alleles. However, the results observed in Caucasian patients are not reproducible in other populations, such as in Japanese individuals. The aim of this study is to examine the HLA alleles in Brazilian patients with sarcoidosis confirmed by biopsy. Sixty-three patients were included in the study, and the HLA alleles were compared with 126 control individuals. HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1 and -DQB1 genes were typed using a Luminex Multi-analyte profiling system (One Lambda, Inc. Canoga Park, CA). Among sarcoidosis patients, the HLA A23, A80, B08, B41, DQB105 and DRB114 antigens tended to be more common than in the controls, whereas the B44, B45, B51, B58, DRB115 and DRB116 alleles were more frequently found in control subjects than in the sarcoidosis patients. However, after Bonferroni correction, only the HLA-DRB114 allele was found to be significantly different between sarcoidosis patients and controls (pC=0.0047, OR=11.69, CI=2.47-55.22). This allele was more frequent in mestizos and black patients. The presence of an HLA-DRB114 allele might determine the risk of sarcoidosis in Brazilian individuals, especially in mestizos and black patients.