What the FDA Relabeling of Abacavir Means for You and Your Patient

Detecting HLA Alleles

November 2008

The Class I HLA antigens are frequently typed immunologically prior to organ and bone marrow transplantation and there are various methods that are used. Some low to moderate methods do not give all details necessary to ascertain which patient has the HLA-B*5701 allele.

Some of these methods include flow cytometry, since HLA genes are expressed on the surface of most nucleated cells. Immunophenotyping with strip devices or hybridization of the DNA with allele-specific probes are two other methods used.

Increased resolution can be obtained using other methodologies such as sequence-specific PCR which is specifically dependent upon precise complementarity of the PCR primer with the target DNA sequence or by bidirectional DNA sequencing, which is the most accurate but can be quite costly to perform.

An alternative approach is to perform screening using low to moderate resolution techniques to screen all patients and then to confirm positives with high-resolution sequencing.

< Previous Slide

Detecting HLA Alleles

Next Slide >

 

Jump to section:

• Introduction
• Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy
• Abacavir
• FDA Caution and Relabeling
• Abacavir Hypersensitivity
• Abacavir HSR and HLA Gene
• HLA-B Antigens and Alleles
• Naming Conventions - HLA-B*5701
• Chromosome 6
• Detecting HLA Alleles
• HLA-B*5701 Correlations
• HLA-B*5701 Correlations
• Clinical Utility³
• Problems
• If HSR Symptoms are Present⁴
• If HSR Symptoms are Present⁴
• Recommendations for Physicians⁵
• Recommendations for Physicians⁵
• Information for Patients⁵
• Information for Patients⁵
• HLA-B*5701 Genotyping
• References
• Questions?