Celiac disease (CD) is an autoimmune disease characterized by chronic diarrhea, inflammatory lesions of small bowel and nutritional malabsorption. CD is strongly associated with the presence of HLA-DQB*02, DQB*03:02 and DQA*05. The absence of any one of these three human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles rules out the diagnosis of CD in suspected patients. Here, we describe a novel method to detect the presence of these specific HLA alleles using real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) with melting curve analysis. Compared with current HLA typing assays, the real-time PCR method is faster, requires fewer handling steps and provides 100% sensitivity and specificity for typing of HLA-DQB*02, DQB*03:02 and DQA*05 alleles.
© 2011 John Wiley & Sons A/S.