Association between HLA polymorphism and graft failure in less than 5 years after kidney transplantation

Objective To study the association between HLA polymorphism and graft failure after kidney transplantation in 5 years.Method Seven hundreds and fifty-one cases of recipients with a follow-up period ＞5 years from Jan.2000 to Feb.2009 after transplantation were collected,including 50 cases of graft failure after kidney transplantation in 5 years as graft failure group and 701 with good function graft as control group.Polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific primers (PCR-SSP)technique was used to analyze HLA-A,B,DRB1 in low-to medium-resolution typing.Polymerase chain reaction-sequence based genotyping (PCR-SBT) technique was used to analyze the presence of susceptibility genes for HLA high-resolution typing.SPSS13.0 statistical software was used to analyze the difference of HLA distribution between two groups.Result Forty-seven HLA genes were expressed in the graft failure recipients,including 16,19 and 12 genes respectively at HLA-A,B,DRB1 loci.The phenotype frequency (PF) was ≥0.1 in 42.55％ (20/47),0.1＞PF≥0.05 in 34.04％ (16/47),and PF＜0.05 in 23.40％ (11/47) respectively.The frequency of HLA-DRB1 * 17 (03) was significantly higher in graft failure group than in control group (0.213 vs.0.062,OR =4.564,95％ CI (2.466,8.444),Pc =0.000).SBT sequencing showed the high-solution typing of HLA-DRB1 * 17(03) in graft failure group and control group was 100％ and 98.81％ for DRB1 * 03:01,respectively.Conclusion HLA-DRB1 * 03:01 was highly expressed in recipients with graft failure in 5 years following renal transplantation.It hints that HLA-DRB1 * 03:01 allele itself may be the susceptibility genes that lead to graft failure in 5 years. Key words: Kidney transplantation;  Kidney failure;  HLA-A antigens;  HLA-B antigens; HLA-DRB1 antigens