Association of HLA-DR phenotypes and T-lymphocyte-receptor beta-chain-region RFLP with IDDM in Japanese.

Fifty Japanese patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) and 94 normal subjects were genotyped for BglII restriction-fragment-length polymorphism (RFLP) of the T-lymphocyte-receptor beta-chain (TLR beta)-region gene and analyzed in relation to HLA-DR phenotypes. The antigen frequencies of DR4 and DR9 in the IDDM population were significantly higher than those in the normal population, with relative risks of 1.87 (P less than .02) and 2.42 (P less than .01), respectively. Hybridization of digested DNA with the TLR beta probe revealed two alleles of 9.3 and 8.6 kilobases (kb). The allele frequency of 8.6 kb in patients with IDDM (79%) was significantly (P less than .05) higher than that in normal subjects (64%). When TLR beta-region RFLP in IDDM was further analyzed with respect to the HLA-DR phenotypes, the frequency of 8.6 kb was significantly increased in patients with DR4 but not DR9 (DR4/X) and those with DR9 but not DR4 (DR9/X) compared with the frequency found in normal subjects (P less than .05); the relative risks of 8.6 kb in DR4/X and DR9/X were 2.77 and 4.98, respectively. Although the frequencies of HLA-DR phenotypes and of TLR beta-region RFLP in IDDM and normal subjects were apparently different from those reported for Caucasians, this population-association study indicates that in the Japanese, genes conferring susceptibility to IDDM exist near or at the HLA-DR and the TLR beta loci, as has been demonstrated in Caucasians.