Wakitani S, Imoto K, Murata N, Toda Y, Ogawa R, Ochi T
Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Osaka-Minami National Hospital, Osaka, Japan.
Scand J Rheumatol. 1998;27(5):381-2. doi: 10.1080/03009749850154447.
To assess the association between HLA-DRB10901 and Japanese rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, we analyzed the frequency of HLA-DRB10901 in 852 Japanese RA patients. We found that the homozygote of DRB10901 was associated with Japanese RA patients, while the heterozygote of DRB10901 was not. These findings suggest that DRB10901 is a weakly susceptible allele of RA, which in our investigation was not associated with RA by a single allele, but can be by a homozygote. DRB10901 does not have the shared epitope, and it is suggested that there may be some mechanism ofthe association between HLA-DRB1 and RA other than the shared epitope, which was not strong.
