BACKGROUND: Hepatitis B Virus (HBV) infection affect all social strata of
humanity and in the absence of any management, this infection has a different
outcome from one infected person to another. This suggests that there are
specific individual factors that influence the outcome of the pathology. Sex,
immunogenetics and age of contraction of the virus have been cited as factors
that influence the evolution of the pathology. In this study, we looked at two
alleles of the Human Leucocyte Antigen (HLA) system to measure their possible
involvement in the evolution of HBV infection.
METHOD AND RESULTS: We conducted a cohort study involving 144 individuals spread
over 04 distinct stages of infection and then compared allelic frequencies in
these populations. A multiplex PCR was conducted and the data obtained was
analyzed using R and SPSS software. Our study revealed a predominance of
HLA-DRB1*12 in our study population without, however, showing a significant
difference between HLA-DRB1*11 and HLA-DRB1*12. The HLA-DRB1*12 proportion was
significantly higher in chronic hepatitis B (CHB) and resolved hepatitis B (RHB)
compared to cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) (p-value = 0,002).
Carrying HLA-DRB1*12 has been associated with a low risk of complication of
infection (CHB → cirrhosis; OR 0,33 p-value 0,017; RHB → HCC OR 0,13;
p-value = 0,00,045) whereas the presence of HLA-DRB1*11 in the absence of
HLA-DRB1*12 increased the risk of developing severe liver disease. However, a
strong interaction of these alleles with the environment could modulate the
infection.
CONCLUSION: Our study shown that HLA-DRB1*12 is the most frequent and it's
carriage may be protective in the development of infection.