HLA type and survival in gastric cancer.

We studied HLA typing of 17 stage III gastric cancer patients who survived for more than 5 years after gastrectomy, in comparison with normal healthy controls and other gastric cancer patients. As a result, the long-term survivors had a high frequency of HLA-DR4 antigen compared with normal healthy controls (P less than 0.0025). This remains statistically significant after correction of the P value according to the number of HLA-DR antigens tested (corrected P value, less than 0.025), strongly suggesting that the presence of this antigen is associated with long-term survival time for postoperative stage III gastric cancer patients.