An Examination of HLA Frequencies in Three Age Groups

Abstract

The question as to whether the distribution of HLA antigens differs between old and young persons has been studied only in a few population groups. There are observations showing an increase of heterozygosity of the HLA system (Bender et al. 1973, Gerkins et al. 1974) which indicate an advantage of heterozygosity for survival, but other studies fail to confirm this finding (Albert et al. 1974, Mucurová et al. 1975, Bender et al. 1976). Since the present authors, in a study of HLA gene frequencies on five small Danish islands (Hansen et al. 1974) had found a tendency to a changed frequency of certain HLA types among the oldest persons, it was decided to examine this question by typing larger numbers of persons of different age groups.

Lack of association between Alzheimer's disease and histocompatibility antigens

“…The distribution of HLA antigens in these 52 patients was compared to that in two different control populations of Caucasians: 1) a group of 305 Caucasian individuals residing in North Carolina and nearby states who were typed for parentage determinations (NCPC) (Reisner et al in press) and 2 ) the group of 866 persons comprising the North American Caucasian (HTSONAC) population reported in Histocompatibility Testing 1980 . The control samples were not age-matched since no variation between younger and older age groups had been found (Hansen et al 1977). Antigen frequencies in the cases were compared to those in each of the control groups using Fisher's exact test.…”

HLA‐A, B and DR in Caucasians with transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder

“…Caucasian controls were either healthy residents of Texas (N = 100) or North America (N = 1029 for HLA-A, B; N = 1145 for DR), the latter of which were reported in the Eighth International Histocompatibility Workshop (Baur & Danilovs 1980). Control groups were not agematched with patients since neither frequency (Hansen et al 1977, Blackwelder et al 1982 nor heterozygosity (Blackwelder et al 1982) of HLA antigens was found to vary with age. Local controls and patients were typed for HLA-A, B or DR antigens as described previously (Chauvenet et al 198l), using the Amos Modified Method (Amos et al 1969).…”