HLA haplotype on outcomes in pediatric Hodgkin patients enrolled in the italian AIEOP-LH2004 trial

Introduction The human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class I and class II genes are highly polymorphic and proteins encoded by them play an important role in self/non-self immune recognition. The identification of causal variants that modulate the susceptibility to a large number of infections and disease is problematic due to linkage disequilibrium (LD) that extends both across multiple HLA genes and non HLA genes. In a previous study evaluating polymorphic sites 3ʹ Untranslated region (UTR) HLA-G and Hodgkin disease (HL) in pediatric patients, we found the positive association between +3027-A frequencies and progression/relapse. In order to investigate the relationship between 3ʹUTR HLA-G and negative treatment outcome, the extended HLA haplotypes were analyzed.