Analysis of HLA class I-II haplotype frequency and segregation in a cohort of patients with advanced stage ovarian cancer.

In solid tumors, human leucocyte antigen (HLA)-A2 has been suggested to be a risk factor and a negative prognostic factor. The HLA-A2 allele in Scandinavia has a high prevalence; it decreases with latitude and also with ovarian cancer mortality in Europe. Furthermore, an association of the HLA-A2 allele with severe prognosis in serous adenocarcinoma of the ovary in stages III–IV was found. Thirty-two unrelated Swedish women with relapsing or progressive ovarian cancer were analysed for the genotypes at the HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-Cw, and HLA-DRB1 loci by the polymerase chain reaction/sequence–specific primer method. The frequencies of HLA alleles of healthy Swedish bone marrow donors provided by the coordinating centre of the Bone Marrow Donors Worldwide Registries, Leiden, the Netherlands were used as controls. When this cohort of epithelial ovarian cancer patients was compared with healthy Swedish donors, the frequency of HLA-A1 and HLA-A2 gene/phenotype appears, although not statistically significant, to be increased in patients with ovarian carcinoma, while HLA-A3 was decreased. HLA-A2 homozygotes were twofold higher in patients. The A2-B8 haplotype was significantly increased (corrected P value). A2–B5, A2–B15, A2–DRB1*03, A2–DRB1*04, A2–B15–Cw3, and A2–B8–DRB1*03 had odds ratio as well as the level of the lower confidence interval above 1 and significant P value only when considered as single, non-corrected analysis. HLA-B15 and HLA-Cw3 were only present in HLA-A2-positive patients showing that the HLA-A2–HLA-Cw3 and HLA-B15 haplotypes were segregated. In this selected cohort with advanced disease, there are indications of an unusual overrepresentation of HLA class I and II genes/haplotypes as well as segregation for the HLA-A2–HLA-Cw3 and HLA-B15 haplotypes. These findings are presented as a descriptive analysis and need further investigations on a larger series of ovarian cancer patients to establish prognostic associations.