HL-A and its clinical application.

The highly polymorphic and complex system of human leucocyte antigens known as HL-A has been intensively investigated in recent years.1,2 It seems to be widely understood that the research is very actively engaged at the present time in the task and prospect of tissue typing for selecting donors and recipients for organ transplantation in man. In the near future, however, one may anticipate the use of HL-A leucocyte typing for human disease, susceptibility to cancer in man, anthropological study, foetomaternal relations and other studies.3 A com plete understanding of the aforementioned, and related leucocyte system will not come easily. The purpose of this article is to investigate and discuss clinical and other applications of the HL-A system in different medical fields ; transplantation sur gery, epidemiology, genetics, blood bank and other clinical studies for preliminary data.