HLA Allele Distribution in Romanian People: Clinical Significance and Utility Related to Population Genetic Background

Knowledge of allele frequencies of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) system is essentially important in the search for unrelated kidney and bone marrow donors. The Romanian Caucasian population is heterogeneous and the HLA genotyping of the most common alleles brings information on HLA polymorphisms. We have characterized the HLA genetic profile of regional populations in Romania. By this we have targeted the HLA allele frequencies of our Romanian people in order to make possible several clinical applications: the search for best match donors, disease associations, genetic background of rare diseases and disease susceptibility. Our study was carried out on 8252 people typed for the HLA-A, B and DRB1 loci, belonging to four main regions of Romania. The alleles were characterized by the polymerase chain reaction sequence-specific oligonucleotides (SSO) method using the LabType SSO kit, sequence-specific primers (SSP) INNO-TRAIN SSP low resolution kit and INVITROGEN SSP high resolution kit. The most common alleles found in the Romanian population are: HLA-A*01, A*02, A*03, A*11, A*24; HLA-B*18, B*35, B*44, B*51 and HLA-DRB1*01, DRB1*03, DRB1*07, DRB1*11, DRB1*13, DRB1*15, DRB1*16. More than half of them are non-homogeneously spread in Romania. Based on our HLA alleles analysis we think this study provide useful information and the results can serve as a starting point for future research. In order to obtain reliable results concerning factor analysis in the area of allele frequencies, the number of regions included in the study needs to be increased.