HLA polymorphisms in African Americans with idiopathic inflammatory myopathy: Allelic profiles distinguish patients with different clinical phenotypes and myositis autoantibodies

Abstract

These data demonstrate that North American IIM patients from different ethnic groups have both shared and distinct immunogenetic susceptibility factors, depending on the clinical phenotype. These findings, obtained from the largest cohort of North American minority patients with IIM studied to date, add additional support to the hypothesis that the myositis syndromes comprise multiple, distinct disease entities, perhaps arising from divergent pathogenic mechanisms and/or different gene-environment interactions.