Genetic heterogeneity of diabetes and HLA

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Abstract
HLA antigens and genotypes B, D and DR were studied in a large sample of Caucasian insulin dependent diabetic (IDD) probands. The associations between IDD and B8, B15, Dw3, Dw4, DR3 and DR4 were measured by relative risks (RR) and delta values (.delta.). Both the homozygotes (B8/8: RR 10, B 15/15: RR 7, DR3/3: RR32, DR4/4: RR34) and the heterozygotes (B8/15: RR 11, DR3/4: RR 46, Dw3/4: RR 22) for the high-risk antigens showed highly significant elevation of the relative risks, yet there were no statistically significant differences between the homo- and the heterozygotes. The .delta. measurements supported the RR results. RR and .delta. were found significantly decreased for B7, Dw2 and DR2. There were no relationships observed between age at diagnosis or family history and HLA. Although a statistically significant difference between the RR for the high-risk antigens heterozygote vs. the high-risk antigen homozygotes was not demonstrated, the RR was shown to be higher for the heterozygotes. Thus the data are compatible with genetic heterogeneity of IDD.