Hla-B21

A patient with a von Willebrand factor deficiency received three units of fresh frozen plasma during a postoperative period. During the last unit transfusion she developed a severe respiratory distress and non cardiac pulmonary edema was diagnosed based upon the clinical, radiological and hemodynamic findings. Reintubation and mechanical ventilation with end-expiratory pressure were instituted leading to a complete and rapid recovery within 48 h. The serum from the last plasma donor contains an anti-HLA-B21 lymphocytotoxic antibody that did agglutinate neutrophils from HLA-B21 positive individuals...

Results of assessment of HLA antigens in hypertrophic cardiomyopathies in the world literature are very controversial. Work dealing with this problem in sufficiently large groups of patients is lacking, i.e. work which takes into account different functional and morphological forms of the disease. The authors made therefore a detailed investigation of 60 class 1 and 2 antigens in 117 patients with this disease. Values of the relative risk and chi 2 test revealed a number of possible associations. After correction for the number of examined antigens a significantly higher prevalence was proved only in HLA-B21 in patients with the obstructive form and in patients with advanced myocardial hypertrophy (thickness of more than 30 mm)...

Previous analysis has emphasized the correlation between primary structures of class I HLA molecules and their patterns of serologic cross-reactivity. Here we describe the structures of two serologic groups of HLA-B alleles for which this is not the case. HLA-B45, an allele associated with black populations, is serologically paired with B44 in the B12 group; its structure, however, is divergent from that of B44 but closely related to B50. The BN21 (B*4005) allele is associated with native Americans and is serologically grouped with B50 in the B21 group; its structure, however, is more closely related to alleles of the B40 group...