The high molecular weight genomic DNA from 31 patients with idiopathic membranous nephropathy (IMN) has been digested with a restriction endonuclease Taq I, electrophoresed, blotted and hybridised with probes to the HLA-DRB, -DQA, -DQB, -DPA and -DPB genes.
A lower frequency of DRB1*0301 was observed in Greek IMN patients (33%), but this was just significant before correction, when compared to Greek controls (15%, OR 3, P = 0.02).
Furthermore, positive interaction was also observed between HLA-DRB1*15:01 - HLA-DQB1*06:02 and the missense SNP rs35771982 (OR = 15.91, P = 2.76E-29), which is in strong linkage disequilibrium with 5'UTR SNP rs3749119, and intronic SNP rs16844715 (OR = 15.91, P = 2.30E-26) for IMN.
We identified DRB1*1501 (odds ratio, 4.65; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 3.39 to 6.41; <i>P</i><0.001) and DRB1*0301 (odds ratio, 3.96; 95% CI, 2.61 to 6.05; <i>P</i><0.001) as independent risk alleles for iMN and associated with circulating anti-PLA2R antibodies.
In a joint analysis, a multivariate logistic regression model confirmed that HLA-DRB1*15:01 (odds ratio [OR], 24.9; 95% confidence interval [95% CI], 15.3 to 42.6; <i>P</i>=2.3×10<sup>-35</sup>) and HLA-DRB3*02:02 (OR, 17.7; 95% CI, 11.0 to 30.3; <i>P</i>=8.0×10<sup>-29</sup>) independently and strongly associated with PLA2R-related MN.