1. ¹Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea
2. ²Catholic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Bank, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea
3. ³The Catholic Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation Center, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul, Korea

Correspondence: Dr T-G Kim, Department of Microbiology and Immunology, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, 505 Banpo-Dong, Seocho-Ku, Seoul 137-701, Republic of Korea. E-mail: kimtg@catholic.ac.kr

Received 19 April 2007; Revised 2 July 2007; Accepted 4 July 2007; Published online 13 August 2007.

Abstract

Minor histocompatibility antigens (mHags) are polymorphic peptides presented to T lymphocytes restricted by the MHC molecule. It has been reported that disparities of mHags are a potential risk factor for GVHD after hematopoietic SCT (HSCT). Here we observed allelic frequencies of HA-1, -2 and -8 in 139 Korean healthy individuals using PCR-sequence-specific primers, and analyzed the correlation between disparity of these mHags and acute GVHD (aGVHD) in 54 patients who underwent HSCT from unrelated HLA-identical donors. The allelic frequencies in Korean healthy individuals were 39.6 and 60.4% for HA-1^H and HA-1^R, 92.4 and 7.6% for HA-2^M and HA-2^V, 36.7 and 63.3% for HA-8^R and HA-8^P, respectively. The frequencies of mHags incompatibility known to be associated with aGVHD were 16.7% in HA-1, 0% in HA-2 and 25.9% in HA-8. However, the statistically significant association of aGVHD with these mHags incompatibility was not found between healthy donors and leukemia patients after unrelated HSCT. This first report about mHags in Koreans may be helpful in further defining the clinical impact of mHags disparities in HSCT and in comparing with other populations.