MICA marks additional risk factors for Type 1 diabetes on extended HLA haplotypes: an association and meta-analysis.

The association of the HLA complex on chromosome 6 does not explain total linkage of the HLA region to Type 1 Diabetes (T1D), leading to the hypothesis that there may be additional causal genes in the HLA region for immune-related disorders. Reports on the MHC Class I chain-related A (MICA) gene as candidate for association with T1D are contradicting. We investigated whether variation in MICA is associated to T1D in a cohort of 350 unrelated individuals with juvenile-onset T1D and 540 control subjects, followed by a meta-analysis of 14 studies.