Profile for antigen processing may be linked to HCV protection in infants.(hepatitis C virus )(Brief Article)

2002 JUL 4 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- by Sonia Nichols, senior medical writer - Genotypic profiling of infants born of women infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) shows that infants may be less prone for acquiring infection through vertical transmission when they have a specific class of human leukocyte antigen (HLA).

That class, HLA-DR13, may confer protection by increasing seroreversion in the infants of HCV-infected mothers, according to Isabella Bosi and colleagues, University of Bologna, Bologna, Italy.

In a study of vertical transmission, Bosi's team performed HLA typing on 35 infants, approximately half who had seroconverted, and on 20 mothers.

"Logistic regression analysis showed a significant negative association between children's HLA-DR13 antigens and risk of HCV vertical transmission," said Bosi and coauthors.

A greater number of studies have examined the role of vertical transmission in the children of mothers coinfected with HCV and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). In those studies, researchers have found an inverse relationship between the risk for vertical transmission of HCV and HLA-DR13. According to Bosi's team those findings held true when they included a model for maternal HIV coinfection in their study. "HLA-DR13 and maternal HIV coinfection showed a separate, opposite effect on vertical HCV infection," they stated.

Children with this class of HLA were approximately eight times more likely not to be infected than children without, according to study data (HLA ...