Human Leukocyte Antigen B27 (HLA-B27) in the General Population in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Background: Determining the prevalence of the human leukocyte antigen B27 (HLA-B27) in the general population in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was performed at King Abdulaziz University in the period May 23, 2019 - August 31, 2019 and included four hundred Saudi healthy blood donor subjects (200 male [50%]). We used blood samples in ethylenediaminetetraacetic acid (EDTA) tubes. The HLA-B27 alleles were detected by the Single Specific Primer-Polymerase Chain Reaction (SSP-PCR) using the HLA-B27 Screen Real Time kit from BioDiagene S.R.L (Palermo, Italy). Data analysis was achieved by the statistical package for social science (IBM SPSS Inc., version 20).

Results: Ten (2.5%) were positive for HLA-B27 (6 female [60.00%]). HLA-B27 positivity in blood groups was 3% in O and B, 1.7% in A, nil in AB but almost equal in Rh+ve (2.5 %) and Rh-ve (2.4 %) blood groups, with no significant difference neither between male and female (p = 0.52), nor between blood groups (p = 0.77).

Conclusions: The prevalence of 2.5% for HLA-B27 in the general Saudi population was similar to that of Omair et al. using samples of Saudi cord blood [14]. The positivity in females was 1.5 times higher than in males. No correlation was seen between HLA-B27 and gender and blood groups.