Frequency and distribution of HLA-DQB1 alleles from 2076 cord blood samples of the Vietnamese cohort

Human leucocyte antigen (HLA) alleles are very diverse and characterized by ethnicity. To date, information about the frequencies and distributions of HLA alleles among the Vietnamese population is still limited. In this study, HLA-DQB1 alleles of 2076 cord blood units from individuals belonging to Vietnam's Kinh ethnic people were genotyped using Luminex-based polymerase chain reaction sequence-specific oligonucleotide. The results of the study demonstrated that there were 23 alleles on the locus HLA-DQB1. Among those, there were six alleles with high frequencies of over 5%, including DQB1^*03:01 (35.9%), DQB1^*05:01 (12.8%), DQB1^*03:03 (12.2%); DQB1^*06:01 (7.20%), DQB1^*05:02 (6.62%) and DQB1^*02:01 (5.30%) and five rare alleles with low frequencies of below 0.1%. More importantly, this study for the first time reported the presence of two new rare alleles including DQB1^*01:01 and DQB1^*01:02. Conclusively, this study provided significant information about HLA-DQB1 alleles for further investigations and clinical applications.