HLA and Acute Poststreptococcal Glomerulonephritis

To the Editor: Immunogenetic factors responsible for the development of acute glomerulonephritis after streptococcal infection have not yet been clarified, although several attempts have been made to elucidate the interactions between hosts and nephritogenic streptococci.^{1 2 3} However, the strong associations between HLA-D specificities and several diseases that have been demonstrated in recent years^{4 5 6} suggest that HLA-linked immune-response genes or immunosuppressive genes are important in the pathogenesis of these diseases. We selected 46 Japanese patients with acute poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis and typed their HLA-A, HLA-B, HLA-C, and HLA-D antigens to investigate the immunogenetic factors governing susceptibility to this disease. As shown in Table 1,. No extract is available for articles shorter than 400 words.