HLA profiles of multiple sclerosis in Hokkaido, the northernmost island of Japan

Abstract

We studied HLA haplotypes in 43 consecutive clinically definite MS patients in Hokkaido. The patients were classified into Group A, 12 patients with acute transverse myelopathy (ATM) during the course of illness, and Group B, 31 without ATM. We found an association with HLA-DQw7 in Group A, and with DR4 and DRw8 in Group B. The frequency of DQw7 and DR4 were significantly different between Groups A and B. This study may indicate the different genetic backgrounds between the groups. DRw8 and DRw52 antigens were significantly more common in MS than in controls. Our result is inconsistent with previous Japanese studies, and ethnic variation might be considered as a possible cause of the contradiction.