To determine the relationship between susceptibility to atopic myelitis (AM) and polymorphisms of the human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-DPB1 and -DRB1 alleles, we compared each phenotype frequency between 55 AM patients and 367 unrelated healthy controls in Japan. The HLA-DPB1*0201 allele was significantly more frequent in AM patients than in healthy controls (54.5% vs. 31.9%, corrected P value=0.0150, odds ratio=2.564, 95% confidence interval=1.444-4.554). Our result suggests that the immunogenetic background of AM differs from that of other CNS autoimmune diseases, such as multiple sclerosis and neuromyelitis optica, which show distinct HLA class II associations.
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