[HLA B8 and Graves' disease (author's transl)]

Abstract

HLA typing has been carried out in 100 caucasions with Graves' disease and compared with 270 healthy controls. 25 HL-A antigens were characterized using a lymphocytotoxicity micro-technique. Analysis of the results reveals an increased incidence of HLA-B8 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 clear-cut correlation between the presence of HLA-B8 and different characteristics of the disease: sex, age of onset, familial history, exophtalmia, goiter, severity. The knowledge of the relationships between the HLA B8 gene and several auto-immune diseases is a strong argument in favor of the auto-immune nature of Graves' disease. The association between HLA B8 and Graves' disease could be explained by a close linkage between the second HLA locus and one or several Ir-IrG 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.