The HLA-D System in Multiple Sclerosis

A considerable number of studies on the immunogenetic association between multiple sclerosis (MS) and the HLA blood group system have now been reported [2, 3, 6]. Most of these studies have dealt with the phenotypic distribution of HLA-A and -B antigens among MS patients compared with those in healthy controls, showing that HLA-A3 and B7 are significantly increased among MS patients. Due to the fact that HLA-D typing was introduced [13] and internationally accepted [19] relatively late and this method is based on a rather complicated and time consuming cell culture technique, the number of HLA-D typed MS patients is comparatively small. Interestingly enough, the reported HLA-D typing data in MS patients gives clear evidence that the HLA-Dw2 allele is even more strongly associated with MS than HLA-A3 and B7, respectively [9, 10]. This report summarizes our data from the three independent studies on HLA-A, B, and D typing in more than 300 MS patients.