Study of microsatellite polymorphisms around HLA-B locus in the Croatian population

The aim of the present study was to investigate polymorphisms and haplotypes of MICA, D6S2927 and D6S2793 microsatellites and linkage disequlibria (D) between these microsatellite loci and HLA-B in the Croatian population. A total of 179 healthy unrelated Croatians were studied using PCR amplification and electrophoresis on 6% polyacrylamide gel in an automated sequencer (ALFexpress). In total, 6 alleles of D6S2927, 5 alleles of MICA microsatellite locus and 14 alleles of D6S2793 microsatellites were observed. At D6S2927 locus most common allele was D6S2927-4 (23.5%), MICA-5.1 allele was the most frequent (27.6%) at MICA microsatellite, while at D6S2793 locus the most frequent was D6S2793-CA15 (13.1%). Eight HLA-B/D6S2927 haplotypic associations (B*07/D6S2927-4, B*08/D6S2927-3, B*18/D6S2927-3, B*27/D6S2927-1, B*35/D6S2927-5, B*38/D6S2927-4, B*51/D6S2927-32 and B*61/D6S2927-1) showed strong association (p 0.5). Among 88 different HLA-B/MICA haplotypic associations, seven combinations (B*07/MICA-5.1, B*08/MICA-5.1, B*15/MICA-5, B*18/MICA-4, B*27/MICA-4, B*38/MICA-9 and B*51/MICA-6) demonstrated high linkage (D>0.5) with significant p value (p 0.5, p<0.001) for the following combinations: D6S2927-5/MICA-9, D6S2927-3/D6S2793-CA25, D6S2927-4/D6S2793-CA17, D6S2927-3/D6S273-4, D6S2927-3/D6S273-7 and D6S2793-CA26/D6S273-4. These results provide data about region around HLA-B locus which is very attractive because of its contribution to genetic susceptibility for many HLA associated disease and will help in all further HLA-B locus associated disease studies.