Distribution and Protective Role of HLAB40 in Iranian Patients with Kawasaki Disease; a Report from Southern Iran

Objective: kawasaki disease (kd) clinically presents as a systemic vasculitis syndrome with significant cardiovascular involvement. with different incidence among different ethnic groups, the role of certain human leukocyte antigens and their products has been considered as a crucial predisposing factor in the immune responses in this disease. methods: we determined the distribution of human leukocyte antigens type b for 90 iranian patients with kawasaki disease in order to evaluate a possible association between these antigens and this disease in our area. we used the polymerase chain reaction (pcr) sequence specific primers (pcr-ssp) technique for antigen typing. distribution of these antigens for 89 healthy iranians used as control. findings: while 7 (3.9%) of our patients were positive for human leukocyte antigen type b 40*, there were 18 (10.1%) subjects from the control group who had this antigen with statistically significant difference between patients and control group (ci= 95%, rr=1.15 and p= 0.02). data were analyzed by pearson chi-square test and fisher's exact test. spss version 15 was used for statistical analysis and a p value less than 0.05 considered statistically significant conclusion: the presence of higher frequency of allele type-b40* in the control group may represent a protective role for this antigen with resultant decreased susceptibility to kd in our area.