Pani MA, Seidl C, Bieda K, Seissler J, Krause M, Seifried E, Usadel KH, Badenhoop K. Preliminary evidence that an endogenous retroviral long-terminal repeat (LTR13) at the HLA-DQB1 gene locus confers susceptibility to Addison's disease.
Clin Endocrinol (Oxf) 2002;
56:773-7. [PMID:
12072047 DOI:
10.1046/j.1365-2265.2002.t01-1-01548.x]
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Abstract
OBJECTIVE
Addison's disease is associated with particular haplotypes of the human leucocyte antigen (HLA) region [DQA1*0501-DQB1*0201 (DQ2) and DQA1*0301-DQB1*0302 (DQ8)]. This locus harbours several human endogenous retroviral (HERV) long-terminal repeats (LTR). LTRs within the HLA region have been shown to confer additional susceptibility to type 1 diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.
DESIGN
We investigated the role of LTR3 and LTR13, both of which are located adjacent to the DQB1 gene, in Addison's disease.
PATIENTS
Eighty-seven patients and 160 controls were genotyped for HLA-DQA, -DQB, and the presence or absence of LTR3 and LTR13.
RESULTS
Significantly more patients' HLA alleles than those of controls carried the LTR13 insertion (19.0% vs. 10.6%, P = 0.0143), whereas there was only a trend for LTR3 (allele-wise chi-squared test: P = 0.0941). Both, LTR3 and LTR13 are in strong linkage disequilibrium with DQ8, which itself was significantly more frequent in patients than in controls (29.9% vs. 15.0%, P = 0.0089). However, significantly more alleles of DQ8+ patients than of DQ8+ controls carried the LTR13 insertion (44.2% vs. 18.8%, P = 0.0119), whereas we did not observe any difference for LTR3 in the DQ8+ subset (30.5 vs. 23.1%, P = 0.9416).
CONCLUSIONS
We have found preliminary evidence that the endogenous retroviral element DQ-LTR13, but not LTR3, is associated with Addison's disease. LTR13 appears to enhance HLA-DQ8 mediated disease risk. This retroviral insertion therefore might represent a novel susceptibility factor in Addison's disease, but these findings need to be confirmed in a larger data set.
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