HLA-A*26 and Susceptibility of Iranian Patients with Non-Hodgkin Lymphoma

Background: Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (NHL) includes a wide range of diseases with different clinical and biological features. NHL is usually presented as localized or generalized lymphadenopathy. It has been suggested that the HLA class I and II are associated with susceptibility to NHL. Different ethnic groups have been found to have different HLA class I and II alleles which affect NHL. Objective: To evaluate the association of HLA class I and class II with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in Iranian patients. Methods: We performed a case-control genotyping study on 75 Iranian NHL patients who were selected from among the patients referred to the Bone Marrow Transplantation Department of Taleghani Hospital and 120 apparently healthy control subjects using the SSP-PCR by a commercial kit. Results: Our results demonstrated that the HLA-A*26 (p: 0.026; OR: 8.5) allele had positive associations and HLA-B*35 (p: 0.022; OR: 0.375) had negative associations with NHL disease. HLA-DRB1*13 allele showed a decrease in frequency in patients in comparison with the controls, but it did not remain significant after correction. Conclusions: Our results conclude that HLA-A*26 may be a genetic susceptibility factor in Iranian patients with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a finding which generally supports contribution of genetic factors in the etiology of this disorder. In addition, these results may be useful in designing a peptide based vaccine for the Iranian NHL patients with HLA-A*26.