HLA and leprosy in Chinese

Abstract

The authors have studied 77 unrelated Chinese leprosy patients; 40 lepromatous (LL) and 37 tuberculoid (TT and BT). The control group consisted of 238 unrelated normal Chinese subjects. The frequency of HLA-B17 was higher among the leprosy patients as a group than among controls. Twenty-three (29.9% of 77 leprosy patients had B17 compared with 34 of 238 (14.3%) controls. This difference was not significant when corrected for the 26 antigens typed for. The high frequency of B17 was particularly marked in the patient subgroup of tuberculoid leprosy. Fifteen (40.5%) of 37 tuberculoid leprosy patients had B17 compared with 34 of 238 (14.3%) controls. This difference was significant even after corrected for the number of antigens typed for. Lepromatous leprosy patients had a higher frequency of B13 and a lower frequency of A2 than tuberculoid leprosy patients or controls but these differences were not statistically significant.