Rheumatic Fever and the HLA Complex

Background Considering the controversial results published in the literature concerning associations between human leukocyte antigens (HLA) and rheumatic fever (RF), the purpose of the present study was to investigate by means of cosegregation analysis the participation of HLA genes in susceptibility to RF. Methods and Resuls The sample reported here was composed of 51 affected and 66 healthy individuals belonging to 22 genetically informative families. The comparison (X2 goodness-of-fit test) of the observed numbers of identical-bydescent (IBD) HLA haplotypes among all affected individuals (siblings, cousins, and uncle/nephew and grandparent/grandchild type of pairs) with the expected ones under the assumption of independent segregation of HLA alleles and the presumptive RF susceptibility gene gave a value of P=.088.