MHC related genetic susceptibility to Hodgkin's disease

Abstract

The present report describes 4 Caucasoid families, HLA genotyped, with at least 2 affected siblings suffering from Hodgkin's disease. The affected sibling pairs were identical (2 shared haplotypes) in 2 families and haploidentical (1 shared haplotype) in the 2 others. These results together with the data already published provide evidence for a distortion of the segregation of HLA haplotypes: from a total of 43 pairs of siblings reported, the observed repartition is 22, 15, 6 (2, 1, 0 shared haplotypes respectively) instead of 10.75, 21.5, 10.75 (mendelian repartition). The excess of identical siblings pairs (51% instead of 25%) (p less than 10(-5) confirms the existence of a genetic linkage between the chromosomal HLA region and the susceptibility to the disease.