HLA-DR and DQ antigens in insulin-dependent diabetics in Ethiopia

Thirty-one Ethiopian insulin-dependent (or type I) diabetes mellitus (IDDM) patients and thirty-three healthy controls from the same ethnic background were typed for HLA-A, B, C, DR and DQ specificities. The frequencies of both DR3 and DR4 were significantly increased among IDDM patients (resp. p = 0.02, p = 0.01), confirming results in other populations. In contrast to observations in Caucasians, no significant negative association was found with TA10, a newly recognized DQ specificity, at least in the population studied here, whereas DQwl was more frequently observed among healthy controls (p = 0.01). Although this latter difference does not retain statistical significance after correction for the number of comparisons made, these findings may support previous results suggesting the existence of IDDM susceptibility genes associated with DR3 and DR4 and of IDDM resistance genes associated with DQ antigens.