Objective. To investigate the association of susceptibility and protective HLA-DRB1 alleles with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and its clinical markers in an Asian population.Methods. All RA patients (n ‫؍‬ 574) and control subjects (n ‫؍‬ 392) were Korean. HLA-DRB1 typing and further subtyping of all alleles was performed by polymerase chain reaction, sequence-specific oligonucleotide probe hybridization, and direct DNA sequencing analysis. We used a relative predispositional effects (RPEs) method and a false discovery rate correction method for multiple comparisons.Results. The DRB1*0405 and *0901 alleles showed the most significant associations with RA (P ‫؍‬ Conclusion. The DRB1*0405/*0901 heterozygote has the strongest association with RA, suggesting that this heterozygote enhances the susceptibility to RA in Koreans.

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