Human platelet antigen polymorphism in bronchial asthma

Background: Asthma is recognized as a common cause of disability, of great economic cost, and of preventable deaths. In this study we aimed to test our hypothesis to evaluate the relationship between the Human Platelet Antigen-1(HPA-1) polymorphism and bronchial asthma and its severity, which would suggest genetic variances that may be responsible for expression or activation of these receptors, so play a role in explaining the suggested genotypic differences in the risk of bronchial asthma occurrence. Materials and methods: To investigate the relation between the HPA-1 polymorphism and bronchial asthma, we con‌ducted a case-control study of 110 patients with bronchial asthma and 129 non-asthmatic outpatient controls, which were participated voluntarily in this study. After the participants answered a questionnaire aimed at identifying their age, sex, clinical signs and symptoms to identify asthma severity, a trained observer assessed airway reversibility in asthmatic patients. To determine HPA-1 allele frequencies (Ia, Ib) and genotyping for Ia+Ia, Ia+Ib and Ib+Ib in both patients and controls, a blood sample was sent to the laboratory. Results: It was found that the dyspnea was the most common symptom in asthmatic patients, recurrent episodic wheezing (93.6%), cough (90%) and nocturnal symptom (89.1%) were other more common symptoms respectively. Assessment of HPA-1 allele frequencies (Ia, Ib) and genotyping for Ia+Ia, Ia+Ib and Ib+Ib showed no differences in both patients and controls (P>0.05). The rate of Ia allele frequency and Ia+Ia genotype had a direct relationship with asthma severity. Conclusion: We observed strong association between HPA-1a allele and asthma severity, but no association between the presence of HPA-1 polymorphism and bronchial asthma.