Association of HLA class II alleles in patients with juvenile myoclonic epilepsy compared with patients with other forms of adolescent-onset generalized epilepsy

Reports have suggested an association of juvenile myoclonic epilepsy (JME) with an HLA-DR allele. We examined the HLA-DR and DQ frequencies in two populations of epilepsy patients: (1) JME patients and (2) patients with other forms of adolescent-onset, idiopathic generalized epilepsy (IGE). We did DNA-based HLA typing on 24 JME patients and 24 patients with non-JME forms of adolescent-onset IGE, forms that are clinically similar to JME. In typing the HLA region, we paid particular attention to the alleles contributing to the HLA-DR13 type and also to the DQB1 locus alleles that are in linkage disequilibrium with the alleles that comprise the DR13 type. We also examined the HLA-DP locus, which is centromeric to the DR locus. The frequency of DR13 was significantly higher in JME compared with the non-JME patients. Nine JME patients, compared with two non-JME patients, carried that type (χ² = 5.78 [p < 0.017, 1 df]). The odds ratio was 6.6. Furthermore, the DQB1 alleles in linkage disequilibrium with the alleles contributing to the DR13 type were also more frequent in JME than in non-JME epilepsy patients. The χ² is highly significant (8.1, p < 0.005) with an odds ratio of 13.8. These results confirm that JME is an HLA-associated form of epilepsy. They also show that the JME locus probably lies within the HLA region, most likely between the HLA-DP and HLA-B loci. The association studies also confirm linkage results showing that JME is genetically different from some other IGEs and emphasize that careful diagnosis is critical to genetic studies of the epilepsies.