[Study of the HL-A system in Basedow's disease (author's transl)]

Abstract

HL-A typing has been carried out in 100 caucasians with Graves' disease and compared with 270 healthy controls. 25 HL-A antigens were characterized using a lymphocytotoxicity microtechnique. Analysis of the results reveals an increased incidence of HL-A8 antigen (35% in patients as compared to 16,3% in controls), with a high degree of statistical significance: p=0.0002 and corrected p X 25) = 0.005. We did not observe a clearcut correlation between the presence of HL-A8 and different characteristics of the disease: sex, age of onset, familial history, exophtalmia, goiter, severity. The knowledge of the relationships between the HL-A8 gene and several auto-immune diseases is a strong argument in favor of the auto-immune nature of Graves' disease. The association between HL-A8 and Graves' disease could be explained by a close linkage between the second HL-A locus and one or several Ir-IgG loci occupied in predisposed individuals by predisposing alleles. In these subjects, an antigenic contact with an exogenous etiological agent would induce a pathological immune response, with production of thyroid stimulating IgG.