HLA-B27 appears to play a direct role in the pathogenesis of ankylosing spondylitis and almost all patients with this disease have HLA-B27. Therefore, a diagnosis of ankylosing spondylitis can virtually be excluded in the absence of HLA-B27. Many techniques have been used for HLA-B*27 typing. Of these, molecular methods are the most sensitive and specific but require extracted DNA as the testin...

we describe a 16 year old boy with acne fulminans associated with axial and peripheral polyarthritis. the patient's clinical course and therapy with isotretinoin, prednisolone and oxytetracycline are described. a possible association between the presence of hla -b 27 antigen and reactive arthritis with acne fulminans in this case is evaluated. a review of the literature is included.

AIMS/BACKGROUND Anterior uveitis associated with juvenile chronic arthritis concerns two different clinical entities: firstly, antinuclear antibody (ANA) positive patients who have a chronic anterior uveitis with severe complications and often a poor visual prognosis; secondly, usually HLA-B27 positive children, predominantly boys, with unilateral recurrent anterior uveitis. Three patients are ...

The structure of a variant HLA-B27 antigen, B27.2, that is distinguished from the HLA-B27.1 and HLA-B27.3 subgroups by specific cytolytic T lymphocytes has been established by comparative peptide mapping and sequence analysis. There are only three amino acid substitutions between B27.1 and B27.2: aspartate-77, threonine-80, and leucine-81 in HLA-B27.1 are changed to asparagine-77, isoleucine-80...

OBJECTIVE Although the products of the HLA subtypes B*2705 and B*2709 differ only in residue 116 (Asp versus His) within their peptide-binding grooves, they are differentially associated with inflammatory rheumatic diseases such as ankylosing spondylitis (AS): B*2705 occurs in AS patients, whereas B*2709 is only rarely encountered. The reasons for this distinct association are still unclear but...

The MHC locus on human chromosome 6 harbors the most polymorphic genes in the human genome, and the large number of alleles in human populations has permitted key structural features of MHC class I and class II genes that influence susceptibility to several human autoimmune diseases to be delineated. In this issue, Hülsmeyer et al. adds a new twist to the already rich literature on MHC polymorp...

Patients with ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, and psoriasis alone were typed for HLA A, B, Cw, and DR antigens, and the antigen frequencies were compared with those in a normal control population and in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. Patients with psoriasis had a significantly raised frequency of Cw6. Those with arthritis in addition to their psoriasis also had raised frequenc...

Aim: The aim of our survey was to identify spondyloarthritis – associated to HLA -B phenotypes in the population from north-eastern part of Romania. Genetic (HLA or nonHLA genes) and infectious factors are involved in determining spondyloarthritis susceptibility and severity. The most frequent association is with HLA-B27 antigen, but the extent of association of this antigen with spondyloarthri...

The association between the major histocompatibility antigen HLA-B27 and ankylosing spondylitis is the strongest of all known associations between class I HLA and disease. Over 90% of patients with ankylosing spondylitis have B27,1 whereas it is found only in 7-15% of normal white subjects. In addition, B27 is associated with certain reactive inflammatory conditions following gastrointestinal o...