Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 National Cell Bank of Iran, Pasteur Institute of Iran, Tehran, Iran

2 Deartment of Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Medical Sciences/University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

3 Department of Immunology, School of Public Health, Medical Sciences/University of Tehran, Tehran, Iran

10.22034/iji.2008.17105

Abstract

Background: Different studies have demonstrated that a small proportion of healthy individuals receiving the hepatitis B (HB) vaccine do not produce protective levels of anti-HB antibody, a phenomenon which could be linked to certain human leukocyte an-tigen (HLA) class-II alleles or haplotypes.
Objectives: The present study was under-taken to determine the frequency of HLA class-II alleles in Iranian healthy adult re-sponders and non-responders to HB vaccine.
Methods: Twelve non-responders (anti-HBs antibody<10 IU/L) and 46 responders (anti-HBs antibody>100 IU/L) were tissue typed for HLA class-II. HLA-DRB1, DQB1 and DQA1 alleles were determined using polymerase chain reaction based on sequence specific primers (PCR-SSP) technique. Accessibility to excess amount of genomic DNA was possible using Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-transformed B-cells established from all vaccinees.
Results: Our results demon-strated increased frequencies of HLA- DRB1*07, DRB1*03, DRB1*04, DQB1*0201, DQA1*0201 alleles and HLA- DRB1*07/DQB1*0201/DQA1*0201 and DRB1*04/DQB1*0302/DQA1*03011 haplotypes in the non-responder group. Com-parison between responders and non-responders revealed only a significant difference for DQB1*0201 allele (p<0.05).
Conclusion: These findings confirm the association of certain HLA alleles and haplotypes with the lack of antibody response to HB vaccine in an Iranian population.

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