ASSOCIATION BETWEEN DIFFERENT HLADRB1 ALLELES AND SEVERITY IN RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS

Abstract

Objectives: To evaluate the association between different HLADRB1 alleles and the development of serious complications in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods: We performed an observational, longitudinal and retrospective study of a cohort of 134 patients with established RA (ACR/EULAR 2010) from the registry of our department, older than 18 years and without other associated autoimmune pathologies except secondary Sjogren’s syndrome and who had the requested HLADRB1 genotype. Patients with ≥ 1 of the following HLA-DRB1 alleles were considered positive shared epitope carriers (SE+): *01:01, *01:02, *04:01, *04:04, *04:05, * 10:01, *03:01 or *07:01. The remaining patients without any of these alleles were considered shared epitope negative (SE-). Serious complications of RA were included: interstitial lung disease, cardiovascular events, cancer, admissions for serious infections, vasculitis, Felty’s syndrome, or death. Other severity data: erosions, rheumatoid nodules, multiple resistance to biologicals (3 or more biologicals), secondary Sjogren’s syndrome or osteoporosis. Descriptive and bivariate analysis was performed between the different alleles (χ2 /ANOVA). Cox regression analysis was performed to estimate the influence of the different alleles on mortality.