ORIGINAL ARTICLES

HLA-DR17 and Mooren’s ulcer in South India

J R Zelefsky¹, C J Taylor², M Srinivasan³, S Peacock², R S Goodman², T Key², P G Watson² and E T Cunningham^4,5

¹ New York University School of Medicine, New York, New York, USA
² Tissue Typing Laboratory (Box 209), Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Hills Road, Cambridge, CB2 0QQ UK
³ Aravind Eye Hospital and PG Institute of Ophthalmology, Madurai, Tamil Nadu, India
⁴ The Francis I Proctor Foundation, UCSF School of Medicine, San Francisco, California, USA
⁵ The Uveitis Service, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco, CA, and Adjunct Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology, Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford, CA, USA

Correspondence to:
Dr C J Taylor, Tissue Typing Laboratory (Box 209), Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Hills Road, Cambridge CB2 0QQ, UK; craig.taylor{at}addenbrookes.nhs.uk

Objective: To investigate the association between Mooren’s ulcer and human leucocyte antigen (HLA) type DR17(3) in patients from the Tamil Nadu State of South India.

Methods: Blood samples from 38 patients with Mooren’s ulcer and 45 age- and sex-matched controls were obtained prospectively. HLA-DR and HLA-DQ typing was performed by PCR using sequence-specific primers.

Results: Fifteen (40%) of the patients with Mooren’s ulcer tested positive for HLA-DR17(3) compared with seven (16%) of the controls (p = 0.01). Seventeen (45%) of the patients also tested positive for the closely linked HLA-DQ2 compared with 11 (24%) of controls (p = 0.05). When adjusted for multiplicity, the correlation between HLA-DR17(3) and Mooren’s ulcer remained significant (p = 0.03).

Conclusions: These data demonstrate an association between HLA-DR17(3) and Mooren’s ulcer in South Indian patients, supporting autoimmune theories about the pathogenesis of the disorder.

Competing interests: None declared.

CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    What's this?