frequencies of hla-e*01:01/*01:03 alleles in an iranian healthy population and its comparison with hyperglycemia patients

Background and aims: the human leukocyte antigen-e (hla-e) is a member of non-classical hla class-i genes which is highly conserved through evolution. in general, so far 25 alleles of hla-e have been described. however, the existence of only two allelic group; hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 have been demonstrated in all the populations. hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 differ only at codon 107 of exon 3. the aim of this study was to survey on the frequency of hla-e alleles; hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 in healthy and high blood sugar subjects. materials and methods: genomic dna was extracted from the whole blood of 137 randomly selected healthy individuals and 86 patients with high blood sugar by using salting-out method. hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 alleles were determined by polymerase chain reaction sequence-specific primers. to overcome the ambiguity of some results, polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method saw used. finally, the nucleotide sequence of a limited number of polymerase chain reaction products was determined. results: in healthy subjects, the allelic frequency of hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 were 48.9% and 51.1%, respectively. in high blood sugar subjects, the allelic frequency of hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 were 50.6% and 49.4%, respectively. the dominant allele in the healthy subjects was hla-e*01:03 and in high blood sugar group was hla-e*01:01 without significant differences for hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 frequencies in high blood sugar group. conclusions: our results about the frequencies of hla-e*01:01 and hla-e*01:03 alleles in iranian population showed similarities with french and korean populations.