Objective: Papillary thyroid carcinoma (PTC) is the most frequent types of thyroid malignancies. Several genes may be involved in susceptibility of thyroid cancer including Human Leukocyte Antigens (HLA). The association of thyroid carcinoma with HLA alleles has been previously studied in other populations and certain HLA alleles were shown to be either predisposing or protective. The aim of this study was to determine the association between HLA-C allele frequencies and papillary thyroid carcinoma in an Iranian population.
Design: HLA-Cw allele frequencies were determined in patients with papillary thyroid carcinoma (N = 54) and non-related healthy controls (N = 91) using PCR-SSP.
Main outcome: We found that HLACw4 and HLACw15 allele frequencies were significantly higher in our patients compared to the controls [P = 10-4, OR; 12.5, 95% CI 2.6-116.9) and [P = 10-4, OR; 24.7, 95% CI (3.6-1058) respectively].
Conclusions: Our results revealed certain HLA-C alleles are predisposing factors in papillary thyroid carcinoma in Iranian population. This confirms the previous findings for association between HLA-C alleles and differentiated carcinomas in other populations.