Large-scale DNA-based typing of HLA-A and HLA-B at low resolution is highly accurate specific and reliable

DNA-based typing of HLA class I alleles of the HLA-A and HLA-B loci using s equence-specific oligonucleotide primers and/or probes has been used for th e large-scale typing of individuals for the National Marrow Donor Program(R ) unrelated donor registry. Typing was performed by 16 laboratories at a lo w level of resolution (e.g. A*01, B*07). The results of blinded quality con trol analysis for the first 12 months of the project show the typing to be highly accurate, specific and reliable. The total error rare based on 11,54 5 HLA-A and 11,428 HLA-B assignments was 1.1% for HLA-A and 1.9% for HLA-B. This level of accuracy is particularly remarkable because the quality cont rol samples could not be distinguished from 64,180 donor samples tested at the same time by the laboratories.