Association of testicular carcinoma with HLA class II genes and microsatellite polymorphisms close to the tumor necrosis factor genes (TNF)

variation on immune response to carcinogenic factors while TNF locus whtin MHC class III region may have specific roles in tumor pathology such as in promoting tumor implantation. In the present study we report for the first time the distribution of HLA-DRB1 and DQB1 allele frequencies as well as of TNFa, TNFb and TNFd microsatellite alleles in twenty-seven Croatian patients with TC. HLA class II alleles were typed by PCR-SSP method, while microsatellites were tested using PCR and electrophoresis on 6%polyacrylamide gel in an automated seqeuncer (ALFexpress). A total of 19 different DRB1-DRQ1 haplotypes werw determined taking into consideration DRB1-DRQ1 linkage disequilibrium data. The only difference was found for the DRB1*0701-DQB1*0202 haplotype which showed statistically significantly higher frequency in patients than in controls ( 18.5% vs. 7.2%, p=0.02). Analysis of TNF microsatellites demonstrated statistically significant difference only for TNF-b5 allele, which was more frequent among patients ( 37% vs. 12.2%, pcorr=0.01323), while the observed higher frequency of TNF a2 allele among patients did not reach statistical significance ( 24.1% vs. 18.9%). The distribution of TNFa-TNFb haplotypic associations demonstrates marginally significant increase of the TNFa2-TNFb5 haplotype in patients ( 26.9% in patients and 7.1% in controls). The etiological and prognostic significance of the increase of DRB1*0701-DQB1*0202 haplotype and/or TNF microsatellite alleles remains to be determined.