Relationship between human leukocyte antigen status and proliferative diabetic retinopathy in patients with younger-onset type 1 diabetes mellitus

Abstract Purpose To investigate the relationship between human leukocyte antigen (HLA) status and proliferative diabetic retinopathy (PDR) to assess the genetic basis of PDR in younger type 1 diabetic patients. Design Retrospective, nonrandomized, comparative trial. Methods Patients who were diagnosed with type 1 diabetes under 30 years of age (range, 13–28) and had a disease duration of more than 10 years were studied. The patients were divided into two groups: 30 patients who had undergone vitreous surgery younger than 40 years old (the PDR group) and 50 patients without retinopathy (the non–DR group). The duration of diabetes and the level of glycemic control were matched between the two groups. The control group consisted of 50 healthy patients. HLA-A, -B, -C, -DR, and -DQ typing of blood samples was done using the standard microcytotoxicity method. Results The frequency of HLA-B62, Cw4, and DQ4 was significantly higher in the PDR group than in the non–DR group ( P = .0020, P = .048, and P = .0026, respectively). The Cw4-DR4-DQ4 haplotype frequency was significantly higher in the PDR group than in the control group and the non–DR group ( P = .0059). Conclusions Our results suggests that HLA-B62, Cw4, and DQ4 may be useful for predicting the prognosis of retinopathy in patients with younger-onset type 1 diabetes.