Support for an association between HLA-DR1 and schizophrenia in the Japanese population

An increase of HLA-DR1 has been observed in schizophrenia patients from the Japanese population. A decrease of DR4, which was reported in Caucasian pa tients, has also been found in some of the Japanese studies, This small stu dy further investigated frequencies of HLA-DR1 and DR4 in unrelated Japanes e patients with schizophrenia (n = 45) and healthy comparison subjects (n = 117), The number of patients possessing DR1 was higher (10 of 45, 22%) com pared with the comparison group (11 of 117, 9.4%, P = 0.03), This may suppo rt the previous observation of an increased DR1 frequency in the Japanese p atients, When the present data is combined with three previous studies, pro portions of the Japanese subjects with DR1 were 98 of 588 schizophrenia pat ients (16.7%) vs. 93 of 942 comparison subjects (9.9%), However, no differe nce was observed in DR4 frequencies between the patients (51%) and comparis on subjects (44%), (C) 2000 Wiley-Liss, Inc.