HLA Class H Genotyping: Two Assay Systems Compared Jo#{235}lleThonnard,1 Fran#{231}oiseD ldime, ’ Michel Heusterspreute, ’ Beatrice Delepaut, ’ France Hanon,’

In the last few years, a variety of DNA-based human leukocyte antigen (HLA) typing methods have emerged, revealing the extreme polymorphism of HLA genes. This polymorphism makes it difficult for a clinical laboratory to establish the best HLA typing strategy. In this study we have compared two techniques for performing HLA-DRB typing: a commercial rapid assay based on the poly-merase chain reaction (PCR) followed by reverse dot-blot hybridization of the PCR products (the lnno-LiPA assay), and a method based on PCR followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism analysis. We found that both methods provide reliable results with a high rate of concordance (97%) and that lnno-LIPA is convenient for large-scale routine typing. However, if a high-resolution allelic typing is required, each method lacks accuracy bu