Publication Date

2014

Journal Title

Genes Immun

Abstract

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a clinically heterogeneous disease affecting multiple organ systems and characterized by autoantibody formation to nuclear components. Although genetic variation within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) is associated with SLE, its role in the development of clinical manifestations and autoantibody production is not well defined. We conducted a meta-analysis- of four independent European SLE case collections for associations between SLE sub-phenotypes and MHC single-nucleotide polymorphism genotypes, human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles and variant HLA amino acids. Of the 11 American College of Rheumatology criteria and 7 autoantibody sub-phenotypes examined, anti-Ro/SSA and anti-La/SSB antibody subsets exhibited the highest number and most statistically significant associations. HLA-DRB1*03:01 was significantly associated with both sub-phenotypes. We found evidence of associations independent of MHC class II variants in the anti-Ro subset alone. Conditional analyses showed that anti-Ro and anti-La subsets are independently associated with HLA-DRB1*0301, and that the HLA-DRB1*03:01 association with SLE is largely but not completely driven by the association of this allele with these sub-phenotypes. Our results provide strong evidence for a multilevel risk model for HLA-DRB1*03:01 in SLE, where the association with anti-Ro and anti-La antibody-positive SLE is much stronger than SLE without these autoantibodies.

Volume Number

15

Issue Number

4

Pages

210-217

Document Type

Article

Status

Faculty

Facility

School of Medicine

Primary Department

Molecular Medicine

Additional Departments

General Internal Medicine

PMID

24598797

DOI

10.1038/gene.2014.6


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