Allelic distribution of human leukocyte antigen in Iranian patients with pulmonary tuberculosis.

There is convincing evidence for a genetic component in susceptibility to tuberculosis (TB) in humans. Attempts to link susceptibility to TB to human leukocyte antigen (HLA) phenotype have produced conflicting data. The purpose of this study was to determine whether HLA phenotype is associated with clinical TB. We compared the frequencies of HLA alleles in 44 Iranian sputum smear positive pulmonary TB patients with allele frequencies of 108 healthy adults. HLA typing was performed by lymphocytotoxicity assay. The frequencies of HLA-B17 and -DR14 were higher in TB patients and the frequencies of HLA-A26 and -B27 were higher in healthy controls (p value < 0.05, corrected p value [pc] >0.05). Our findings suggest that these alleles are associated (either positively or negatively) with pulmonary TB in an Iranian population. However, considering corrected p value, our data are not conclusive and should be considered preliminary.