Association of HLA-A in autoimmune myasthenia gravis with thymoma

We investigated an association of the HLA-A locus in 78 French Caucasian patients with autoimmune myasthenia gravis (MG) and thymic epithelial tumours. The largest effect was a protection associated with HLA-A⁎02 in MG patients with a B2 type thymoma (OR = 0.323, 95% CI: 0.113-0.756, P = 0.00041). The frequency of HLA-A⁎25 was also increased in the whole group of patients (OR = 3.62, 95% CI: 1.62-7.08, P = 0.0041). Our findings emphasise the interest of the histological classification in the genetic study of thymomas.