Abstract
Genetic susceptibility and EBV infection have been reported as co-factors responsible for the risk of developing NPC. The incidence of NPC has a marked geographic variation, though rare in the west; it is high in countries such as Taiwan and China. While Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) have been associated with NPC predisposition in Asians, yet there have been no studies on HLA association to NPC in Saudis.
HLA-A, -B, -C and -DRB1 were examined for their association to NPC in case-control study of Saudi patients compared to healthy Saudi attending a tertiary hospital (n=45 cases and n=107 controls). HLA typing was molecularly performed using a commercial Sequence-Specific oligonucleotides (SSO) kit and following the manufacturer instructions (rSSO; One Lambda, Canoga Park, CA). Statistical analysis was done with Fisher’s exact test (two-tailed). The analysis was performed on Stata package. The genetic model was allele positivity corresponding to the dominant model.
The results clearly demonstrated that while NPC protection was associated with HLA-DRB1∗11 allele (OR=0.1412; p=0.043), most NPC susceptibility was strictly associated with HLA-B∗08 (OR=3.629; p=0.017) and HLA-DRB1∗07(OR=2.296; p=0.041) alleles. Surprisingly and in contrast to the Taiwanese and Chinese studies, we could not find any significant association with any of the HLA-A or HLA-C alleles.
Our study show for the first time, that HLA-DRB1∗11 allele have protective association with NPC and HLA-B∗08 and HLA-DRB1∗07 have susceptibility association with NPC.