A study of HLA-DR polymorphism in four physical constitution groups classified by Korean traditional medicine / 대한내과학회지

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: In Korean traditional medicine, human beings are classified into 4 groups accordance with the characteristics of physical constitution, named; Taeum, Taeyang, Soum, and Soyang. Most of Korean traditional doctors believe that the back ground of pathophysiology is differ among each group in many diseases. HLA is the most polymorphic gene and related with human immune response. It has been used for determination of individual identification, genetic diversity and a study of disease association in different ethnic group. It has well known that the most human inflammatory disease which thought to have some autoimmune basis are in some way promoted by genes of the HLA region. The purpose of this study is to observe the distribution of HLA-DR genotypes in 4 types of physical constitution in Korean traditional medicine. METHODS: Three hundred and ten Korean subjects(Soyang 58cases, Soum142cases, Taeum 92cases, Taeyang 18cases) were enrolled for this study. Genomic DNAs extracted by phenol/chroloform were amplified with allele specific primers and determined by 2% agarose gel electrophoresis with ethidium bromide staining for analysis of HLA-DR polymorphism. RESULTS: The genotype frequency of HLA-DR in a total or 310 Koreans was DR1 ; 7.2%, DR 2; 10.5%, DR 3;1.7%, DR 4; 19.9%, DR 5; 11.9%, DR 6;19.9%, DR 7; 7.0%, DR 8; 10.6%, DR 9; 8.7%, DR10;1.9%. There was no significant diffrence of HLA-DR genotype distribution among four physical constitution groups classified by Korean traditional medicine. CONCLUSION: Our results suggest that the classification of physical constitution in Korean traditional medicine is not related to HLA-DR genotypes.