Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (
NAFLD) is the leading cause of chronic
liver disease.
NAFLD is a complex disease and
inflammation is a crucial component in the disease pathogenesis. Recent genome wide association studies in hepatology area highlighted significant relations with
human leukocyte antigen (
HLA) DQ region and certain
liver diseases. The previous animal models also emphasized the involvement of adaptive immune system in the liver damage pathways. To investigate possible polymorphisms in the HLA region that can contribute to the immune response affecting the
NAFLD, we enrolled 93 consecutive biopsy proven
NAFLD patients and a control group consisted of 101 healthy people and genotyped
HLA DQB1 alleles at high resolution by sequence specific primers-polymerase chain reaction. The mean
NAFLD activity score (
NAS) was 5.2 ± 1.2,
fibrosis score was 0.9 ± 0.9, ALT was 77 ± 47.4 U/L, AST was 49.4 ± 26.3 U/L. Among 13
HLA DQB1 alleles analyzed in this study, DQB1*06:04 was observed significantly at a more frequent rate among the
NAFLD patients compared to that of healthy controls (12.9 vs. 2 % χ(2) = 8.6, P = 0.003, P c = 0.039, OR: 7.3 95 % CI 1.6-33.7). In addition, the frequency of DQB1*03:02 was significantly higher in the healthy control group than the
NAFLD patients (24.8 vs. 7.5 %, χ(2) = 10.4, P = 0.001, P c = 0.013, OR: 0.2, 95 % CI 0.1-0.6).
NAFLD patients were grouped according to their
fibrosis score and
NAS. The distribution of DQB1 alleles over stratified
NAFLD patients did not reveal any statistically significant relation. Taken together, immune repertoire of individuals may have an effect on
NAFLD pathogenesis and therefore, in
NAFLD, adaptive immunity pathways should be investigated.