Molecular Biological Study of Periodontal Diseases by Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (RFLP) Analysis of Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) Genes

Abstract

The products of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) class II β-chain genes play an important role in the recognition of foreign antigens in immune reactions . The purpose of this study was to explore the possibility of gene diagnosis for periodontitis by the detection of variations in genes. Seventy Japanese patients with periodontitis and 26 healthy individuals were surveyed with respect to HLA phenotypic frequencies, however, no HLA phenotype specific to any type of periodontitis was observed . Therefore, in order to detect differences between some HLA phenotypes, restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analyses were undertaken with HLA-DR . β and HLA-DQ . β complementary DNA probes in 20 subjects (15 patients and 5 healthy individuals). The RFLP analysis of HLA-DQ . β gene digested with Bam HI revealed that genetic variation existed in only 4 patients with early-onset periodontitis. This genetic variation was also ascertained to be detectable by analysis using polymerase chain reaction PCR) method. Thus, these results substantiate the prospect that gene variations are useful as markers for novel gene diagnosis in periodontitis.