A strong association between HLA‐B*5101 and Behçet's disease in Greek patients

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Abstract
Behçet's disease is known to be associated with HLA‐B51, one of the split antigens of HLA‐B5, among many different ethnic groups. In a Greek population, an increased incidence of HLA‐B5 in the patient group also been reported. Because the B51 antigen has been recently identified to comprise seven alleles, B*5101‐B*5107, we performed HLA‐B51 allele genotyping by the PCR‐SSP method as well as serological HLA‐A and ‐B typing among 31 Greek patients with Behçet's disease to investigate whether there is any correlation between one particular B51‐associated allele and Behçet's disease. The frequency of B51 was remarkably high (80.6%) in the patient group as compared to the ethnically matched control group (26.7%). In addition, HLA‐A26 was also increased in the patients (29.0%) as compared with the healthy controls (3.3%). B51 allele genotyping revealed that all these B51‐positive patients carried B*5101. This study revealed a strong association of Behçet's disease in Greeks with one of B51 subantigens, providing insight into the molecular mechanism underlying an HLA association with Behçet's disease.