HLA-A, B, haplotypes in normal southern Chinese and a lack of associations in renal failure.

Over the last few years, there have been increasingly frequent reports On HLA and disease associations. In some of these reports, it has been suggested that disease associations may be stronger with haplotypes than with individual antigens. How­ ever, considerable statistical diffi­ culties had been encountered when attempts were made to distingish haplotype associations from pheno­ type data. This is particularly so when an individual antigen associa­ tion with a particular disease already exists. l Therefore, to study haplotype effects in disease associa­ tions, family studies must first be done in order to identify the haplo­ types. In this paper we document the HLA locus A and 8 haplotype frequencies in the normal southern Chinese population of Singapore and Malaysia and report a lack of haplotype association in patients with renal failure. As far as we are aware, this is the first time that normal locus A and 8 haplotype frequencies in a Chinese popula­ tion are being documented.