Self-reported pain or injury from equipment used on military deployment.

BACKGROUND: Information about pain and injury from equipment on a particular deployment is not disaggregated in the literature; thus, the nature of the issue is unclear. AIMS: To determine the prevalence of pain or injury during a particular deployment that military personnel attributed to equipment they used on this deployment; and to document the types of equipment they identified, the type of pain or injury and how they thought the pain or injury occurred. METHODS: This paper analyses data from a deployment and health survey of Australian Defence Force personnel. The participants are 8932 personnel who deployed to Iraq and 6534 who deployed to Afghanistan. Participants indicated whether they experienced pain or injury from equipment they used on deployment and detailed their experiences in response to an open-ended question (n = 563). RESULTS: Sixteen per cent of Iraq-deployed and 21% of Afghanistan-deployed participants reported pain or injury from equipment they used on deployment. Body armour was the most common equipment identified; however, a wide range of equipment was related to pain or injury. A new finding is that pain or injury related to armour was attributed to its wear in vehicles and during vehicle ingress or egress. CONCLUSIONS: Knowledge of the nature of pain or injury related to equipment used on deployment may help inform improved designs and practices to reduce or prevent avoidable harm to serving personnel.

The HLA-DRA*0102 allele: correct nucleotide sequence and associated HLA haplotypes.

Here we correct the nucleotide sequence of a single known variant of the HLA-DRA gene. We show that the coding regions of the HLA-DRA*0101 and HLA-DRA*0102 alleles do not differ at two codons as reported previously, but only in codon 217. Using nucleotide sequencing and DNA samples from individuals homozygous in the major histocompatibility complex, we found that the variant, leucine 217-encoding HLA-DRA*0102 allele was present on the haplotypes HLA-B*0801, DRB1*03011, DQB1*0201 (ancestral haplotype AH8.1), HLA-B*07021, DRB1*15011, DQB1*0602 (AH7.1), HLA-B*1501, DRB1*15011, DQB1*0602, HLA-B*1501, DRB1*1402, DQB1*03011 and HLA-A3, B*07021, DRB1*1301, DQB1*0603. The HLA-DRA*0101 allele coding for valine 217 was observed on the haplotypes HLA-B*5701, DRB1*0701, DQB1*03032 (AH57.1), HLA-DRB1*04011, DQB1*0302, HLA-DRB1*0701, DQB1*0202, and HLA-DRB1*0101, DQB1*05011.

IMGT/HLA Database--a sequence database for the human major histocompatibility complex.

The IMGT/HLA Database (www.ebi.ac.uk/imgt/hla/) specialises in sequences of polymorphic genes of the HLA system, the human major histocompatibility complex (MHC). The HLA complex is located within the 6p21.3 region on the short arm of human chromosome 6 and contains more than 220 genes of diverse function. Many of the genes encode proteins of the immune system and these include the 21 highly polymorphic HLA genes, which influence the outcome of clinical transplantation and confer susceptibility to a wide range of non-infectious diseases. The database contains sequences for all HLA alleles officially recognised by the WHO Nomenclature Committee for Factors of the HLA System and provides users with online tools and facilities for their retrieval and analysis. These include allele reports, alignment tools and detailed descriptions of the source cells. The online IMGT/HLA submission tool allows both new and confirmatory sequences to be submitted directly to the WHO Nomenclature Committee. The latest version (release 1.7.0 July 2000) contains 1220 HLA alleles derived from over 2700 component sequences from the EMBL/GenBank/DDBJ databases. The HLA database provides a model which will be extended to provide specialist databases for polymorphic MHC genes of other species.