The Homozygote of HLA-DRB1*0901, not its Heterozygote, is Associated with Rheumatoid Arthritis in Japanese: SHORT REPORT

To assess the association between HLA-DRB1*0901 and Japanese rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients, we analyzed the frequency of HLA-DRB1*0901 in 852 Japanese RA patients. We found that the homozygote of DRB1*0901 was associated with Japanese RA patients, while the heterozygote of DRB1*0901 was not. These findings suggest that DRB1*0901 is a weakly susceptible allele of RA, which in our investigation was not associated with RA by a single allele, but can be by a homozygote. DRB1*0901 does not have the shared epitope, and it is suggested that there may be some mechanism ofthe association between HLA-DRB1 and RA other than the shared epitope, which was not strong.