Association of HLA genes with diffuse panbronchiolitis in Chinese patients

Diffuse panbronchiolitis (DPB) is a pulmonary disease of unknown etiology that predominantly affects East Asians, particularly Japanese with a prevalence of 0.00028. Research has shown that HLA-B54 and HLA-A11 are positively associated with this disease. HLA-A, -B, and -DR loci were analyzed using an oligonucleotide microarray in both Chinese patients with DPB and normal control subjects. The most marked difference between the patients and the controls was the decreased frequency of HLA-A2 (p = 0.001, OR = 0.12), which showed a negative association with the disease; however, there was no significant contribution of HLA-B loci. Interestingly, the frequency of HLA-A11 was increased (p = 0.007, OR = 3.9), in accordance with previous reports on Japanese and Koreans. In addition, the frequency of HLA-DRB5*010/020 slightly increased (p = 0.049). The HLA-associated genes for DPB are located between the HLA-A and HLA-B loci. Differences in HLA-associated genes may partially explain differences in the incidence of DPB among different populations.