Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Coeliac disease has a large variation in clinical outcome. In addition to the classical disease with malabsorption, many individuals have a silent form, in which subject symptoms are missing but autoantibodies and mucosa lesions are identical to the symptomatic disease.
AIM:
To investigate whether differences in HLA DR-DQ genes explain the variation in outcome.
MATERIALS AND METHODS:
HLA DQ alleles were determined in 28 multiplex families with sibling pairs in which one had the symptomatic disease but the other had the silent form.
RESULTS:
No differences in the distribution of HLA DR-DQ haplotypes could be observed. The clinically diagnosed coeliac disease seemed to have earlier onset than silent coeliac disease.
CONCLUSIONS:
Results indicate that the major genetic susceptibility locus, HLA DQ, does not determine the exact clinical outcome of coeliac disease.