HLA‐D Antigen of Japanese Origin (LD‐Wa) and its Association with Vogt‐Koyanagi‐Harada Syndrome

One homozygous cell "Wa" for HLA-D alleles, associated with HLA-Bw22J (Japanese specific variant of HLA-Bw22), was found in a Japanese family. The HLA-D antigenic specificity defined by this cell has been tentatively named LD-Wa. Phenotype frequency of LD-Wa in the Japanese population was 0.16 (13/81). HLA-D typing for LD-Wa was performed in patients with the Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada syndrome (Harada's disease) with which Bw22J is strongly associated (15/35, 42.9%; corrected P less than 0.02). LD-Wa was presented in 22 of 33 patients (33.7%; P less than 0.0000003). The association of LD-Wa with Harada's disease was stronger than that of Bw22J, and this implies that there might be one of the disease susceptibility gene loci affecting the development of this disease more closely linked to an HLA-D gene locus than the HLA-B locus.