A Study On DNA Polymorphism Of The HLA-DQ Locus In Bama Zhuang Nationality And Its Association With Human Longevity

Bama, a remote and mountainous county in northwestern Guangxi. province in China, is well known for her Longevity: the population rate of centenarians there is about 30.8/100,000. To investigate a possible association between HLA antigens and longevity, we have geno typed the HLA-DQ A, ,DQB, loci with PCR-SSP method , dot-blot hybridization and DNA direct silver sequencing technique for 109 Longevous people (90~103yrs), 56 octogenarians( 80~89yrs) and 71 healthy, unrelated, randomly selected subjects(23-70yrs) who live in the same vicinity. All individuals tested are Bama Zhuang nationality for more than 8 generations. RESULTS: The frequency of HLA-DQA,*0102 allele was significantly high in longevous group, as compared to that of control group (p=0.0026). While the frequency of HLA-DQ A, *0101 and DQB1 *0301 of the longevous group was significantly lower than that of the control subjects (P=0.0001 and 0.0249, respectively ). No changes were found between octogenarians and longevous group.Our data suggest that HLA-DQA,*0102, DQA,*0101 and DQB^OSOl may involve in human longevity (OR=2.002, 0.2077 and 0.5007 respectively) in Bama Zhuang population. Further studies are required to clarify the biological meaning of the results.