HLA antigens in chronic alcoholic pancreatitis.

HLA typing was performed in 90 unrelated patients with chronic alcohol-associated pancreatitis. Compared with 523 healthy controls, an increased frequency was found for the HLA-B series antigen, B40 (Pless than 0.00041, corrected P less than 0.011). The increase was slightly more pronounced in patients without pancreatic calcifications than in those with calcifications. Factors such as alcohol consumption, age of disease onset and the presence of diabetes did not affect antigen frequency distribution.