hla-drb1, dqa1 and dqb1 alleles and hap-lotypes frequencies in iranian healthy adult responders and non-responders to recombi-nant hepatitis b vaccine

background: different studies have demonstrated that a small proportion of healthy individuals receiving the hepatitis b (hb) vaccine do not produce protective levels of anti-hb antibody, a phenomenon which could be linked to certain human leukocyte an-tigen (hla) class-ii alleles or haplotypes. objectives: the present study was under-taken to determine the frequency of hla class-ii alleles in iranian healthy adult re-sponders and non-responders to hb vaccine. methods: twelve non-responders (anti-hbs antibody100 iu/l) were tissue typed for hla class-ii. hla-drb1, dqb1 and dqa1 alleles were determined using polymerase chain reaction based on sequence specific primers (pcr-ssp) technique. accessibility to excess amount of genomic dna was possible using epstein-barr virus (ebv)-transformed b-cells established from all vaccinees. results: our results demon-strated increased frequencies of hla- drb1*07, drb1*03, drb1*04, dqb1*0201, dqa1*0201 alleles and hla- drb1*07/dqb1*0201/dqa1*0201 and drb1*04/dqb1*0302/dqa1*03011 haplotypes in the non-responder group. com-parison between responders and non-responders revealed only a significant difference for dqb1*0201 allele (p