Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for determination of HLA: gene dose effect.

In a previous publication we demonstrated that polymorphic HLA antigens could be detected on fresh and dried peripheral blood lymphocytes using the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) with HLA alloantisera (Bishara et al. 1983). In the present study we investigated whether the ELISA technique can be used in determination of gene-dose effect for antigens of the HLA-A and B loci. Lymphocytes from HLA-A1 and HLA-B14 homozygous individuals are shown to bind significantly more anti-HLA alloantibodies than their heterozygous siblings for the same HLA antigens. These results indicate that ELISA is a sensitive and reliable technique for the qualitative and quantitative assay of polymorphic HLA determinants.