Association of HLA-DQA1 (rs9272219) with susceptibility to rheumatoid arthritis in a Han Chinese population.

HLA-DQA1 (rs9272219) has been previously reported that it is a susceptibility locus in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) of UK Caucasian population and North American; however, it has not reported in RA of Chinese population. Our study was to identify whether or not this relationship is reside between rs9272219 and RA in a Han Chinese population. 207 patients with RA and 199 control subjects were recruited. The single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of rs9272219 was tested in alleles and genotype frequencies and the data was analyzed by doing the statistic analysis of odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) from multivariate unconditional logistic regression analyses after pairwise linkage disequilibrium (LD) was estimated. Finally, the Alleles and genotype frequencies distribution of rs9272219 locus among RA patients and control subjects were in accordance with Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium. We found significant association between rs9272219 and RA of Chinese population (OR 0.494, 95% confidence interval [95% CI] 0.354-0.688, P = 0 and OR 2.541, 95% CI 1.695-3.808, P = 0, respectively). In this study, we found that the SNP of rs9272219 in HLA-DQA1 is a potential susceptibility locus in RA of Han Chinese population; the results suggest that HLA-DQA1 may be related to the development of RA.