Evaluation of Association Between HLA Class II DR4-DQ8 Haplotype and Type I Diabetes Mellitus in Children of East Azerbaijan State of Iran.

Purpose: Association between HLA-DR4-DQ8 haplotype and type 1 Diabetes Mellitus (DM-1A) was investigated in children of East Azerbaijan state of Iran because such an association has not been previously studied in this population.

Methods: HLA-typing was performed by polymerase chain reaction sequence-specific priming. For haplotype analysis, the logistic regression model was performed.

Results: Of the three investigated alleles, the frequency of DRB1*0401 was significantly higher among patients compared with that in healthy subjects (76.74% vs. 23.26%).

Conclusion: The findings of the current study are consistent with those of previous studies and show that DRB1*0401 is associated with DM-1A; the frequencies of the two other alleles were also higher among patients, although the differences were not statistically significant. Two haplotypes associated with these alleles were also surveyed, and DRB1*0401--DQA1*0301-, and DRB1*0401--DQA1*0301--DQB1*0302- were the most frequent haplotypes among the patient group.