Behçet disease and the HLA system.

Seventy-three unrelated patients with Behçet disease together with 33 members of seven families with at least two patients per family were tissue typed for 26 antigens of the HLA system. The patients with the complete type of Behçet disease were found to have HLA-B5 more significantly than healthy individuals. Family studies suggest that the genes closely linked to HLA locus influence the degree of severity of Behçet disease.