IMR Press / FBL / Volume 27 / Issue 9 / DOI: 10.31083/j.fbl2709266
Open Access Original Research
HLA-DQA1 and DQB1 Alleles are Associated with Acitretin Response in Patients with Psoriasis
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1 Department of Dermatology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, 410008 Changsha, Hunan, China
2 Department of Pharmacy, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, 410008 Changsha, Hunan, China
3 Department of Clinical Pharmacology, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, 410008 Changsha, Hunan, China
4 National Clinical Research Center for Geriatric Disorders, Xiangya Hospital, Central South University, 410008 Changsha, Hunan, China
*Correspondence: lanchen2008@163.com (Wangqing Chen); zhuwu70@hotmail.com (Wu Zhu)
Academic Editor: Giuseppe Ingravallo
Front. Biosci. (Landmark Ed) 2022, 27(9), 266; https://doi.org/10.31083/j.fbl2709266
Submitted: 13 May 2022 | Revised: 23 June 2022 | Accepted: 2 August 2022 | Published: 28 September 2022
Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s). Published by IMR Press.
This is an open access article under the CC BY 4.0 license.
Abstract

Background: Psoriasis vulgaris is an immune-mediated inflammatory skin disease. Although the pathogenesis of psoriasis is unclear, genetic susceptibility, such as HLA-C*06:02, is believed to be a major risk factor. However, there is a paucity of knowledge regarding the relationship between genetics and the response to systemic treatment of psoriasis. We hypothesized that genetic variations in human leukocyte antigen (HLA) genes may act as predictors of acitretin treatment in psoriasis. The aim of our study was to explore the presence of HLA gene variants in patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis receiving acitretin treatment. Methods: A total of 100 Han Chinese patients with psoriasis completed the study. 24 patients including 16 responders and 8 non-responders underwent deep sequencing by MHC targeted region capture and 76 samples were genotyped by Sanger sequencing (SBT) based HLA typing for validation. Results: Regressions with adjustment for age, sex, body mass index (BMI), and baseline psoriasis area and severity index (PASI) revealed that two HLA alleles (HLA-DQA1*:02:01, DQB*:02:02) were associated with the response to acitretin. The DQA1*0201-positive patients showed a better response to acitretin compared to the DQA1*0201-negative patients (relative risk (RR) = 10.34, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.62–40.77, p = 0.001), and the DQB1*0202-positive patients manifested a better response to acitretin when compared to the DQB1*0202-negative patients (RR = 21.01, 95% CI: 2.53–174.27, p = 0.005). Conclusions: Our observations support the potential role of HLA-DQA1*:02:01 and DQB*:02:02 as pharmacogenetic markers of the acitretin response in patients with psoriasis.

Keywords
psoriasis
acitretin
human leukocyte antigen
pharmacogenetics
response
Funding
81974479/National Natural Science Foundation of China
81903222/National Natural Science Foundation of China
2021JJ70152/Hunan Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China
TC210804V/Project of Intelligent Management Software for Multimodal Medical Big Data for New Generation Information Technology, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of People’s Republic of China
Figures
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