HLA antigens in Sardinian patients with diabetes mellitus.

HLA-B8 and HLA-Bw15, two antigens associated with juvenile diabetes mellitus in Caucasians of North Europe, have a very low frequency in Sardinian population, who nevertheless have a high frequency of diabetes. The association between diabetes and HLA in Sardinian population has therefore been investigated in 60 patients with diabetes, mellitus (32 with juvenile diabetes and 28 with maturity onset diabetes) and 96 normal, unrelated random controls. No disturbance of HLA distributions was found in maturity onset diabetes, but the frequencies of B8 and Bw35 were increased among juvenile diabetics (18.7 percent and 28.1 percent respectively, compared with 2.0 and 11.4 percent in healthy controls). B18 antigen frequency was also increased, although not significantly, in juvenile diabetes mellitus (65.6 percent compared with 50 percent in controls). In contrast the frequency of HLA-Bw15 in two groups of diabetics differed little from that of controls.