NO SIGNIFICANT ASSOCIATION BETWEEN HLA ANTIGENS AND CLASSIC KAPOSI-SARCOMA - MOLECULAR ANALYSIS OF 49 JEWISH PATIENTS

Because of the abundance of the classical form of Kaposi sarcoma (CKS) among Jews and people of Mediterranean origin, studies have been cond ucted to find an association between CKS and HLA antigens. No conclusi ve results have been drawn, although in a number of these investigatio ns an increased incidence of HLA-DR5 was reported. In our study 49 CKS patients of Jewish origin were serologically analyzed for HLA class I and class II antigens. We found no significant deviation in serologic ally defined HLA antigens frequencies between patients and 99 ethnical ly matched controls. However, a nonsignificant decrease in the frequen cies of HLA-DR4, HLA-DR12, and the combination of DR4/DR11 was observe d. Then we determined in these patients HLA-DRB1, HLA-DQA1, and DQB1 a llelic polymorphism by oligotyping on PCR-amplified DNA. In this molec ular analysis the only notable finding was a decreased frequency of th e combination HLA-DQA10301/DQB1*0301, which appeared in one (2%) pati ent compared to 13 (13%) of the controls. However, the decrease was no t statistically significant. On the basis of both serological and mole cular analysis done on a relatively large group of CKS patients, we co nclude that there is no significant linkage between HLA antigens and C KS in Jewish population.