Abstract.
Objective: In this study we evaluated the contribution of major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genes to soluble histocompatibility antigen class II (sHLA-II) secretion in African American patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).¶Methods: A sensitive enzyme-linked immunoassay was used to quantitate sHLA-II in the serum of 7 patients with RA, as well as 28 of their kinships and 49 HLA typed normal African American individuals.¶Results: Mean sHLA-II values were higher in patients with RA than those in healthy African American individuals (p < 0.05). There were variations in concentrations in individual patients but these were unrelated to any apparent clinical event. The proportion of unaffected family members with detectable levels of sHLA-II was not significantly different than those in normal controls. Neither specific HLA-haplotype, or HLA-allele(s) correlated with high or low sHLA-II secretion.¶Conclusions: Our data suggest that sHLA-II molecules are not regulated by MHC linked genes but may be regulated by non-MHC linked genes and racial background may reflect genetic heterogeneity of the expression of this soluble HLA material. These observations contrast with previous observations concerning soluble HLA class I (sHLA-I) molecules in a described population sample which were almost the precise reverse.
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Received 12 December 2001; returned for revision 4 February 2002; accepted by W. B. van den Berg 19 February 2002
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Adamashvili, I., Fraser, P., Milford, E. et al. Soluble HLA-II expression in African-Americans. Inflamm. res. 51, 290–294 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00000306
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/PL00000306