Anthhropological and genetic studies on ocular inflammatory diseases in Mongoloids

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It is well known that certain intractable inflammatory ocular diseases occur only in Mongoloid population. We have been studying the epidemiology, clinical feature, medical anthropology, and molecular genetics in mainly Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease and Behcet's disease.It was revealed that Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease was found in East Asian countries, Central Asian countries, North America and South America. In contrast, in Caucasians, this disease was rarely found. Vogt-Koyanagi-Harada disease was frequently seen in Australian Aborigini people, and possibly, in Papua New Guinean population. Since this disease is strongly associated with HLA-DRB1ィイD1*ィエD104 in East Asian patients, it is important to further study if the same HLA association is found in other populations.In Behcet's disease, no patients were found in East Asian countries. This disease was mainly found along the Silk Road, such as Korea, China, Iran, Turkey, and Morocco. In these countries, the number of new cases is still increasing and further epidemiological studies are needed to investigate the possible cause for this. In 1998's investigation we saw patients with Behcet's disease in Mongolia. This is the first report of the world. We have finished analyzing the molecular genetics of Greek patients with Behcet's disease. The frequency of HLA-BィイD1*ィエD15101 was 81.1 %, significantly higher than the healthy normal Greek controls. MICA-A6, one of the microsatellite alleles near the HLA region, was also significantly associated with this disease. It was interesting to find the same HLA association between Japanese and Greek patients with Behcet's disease.We have successfully gotten the blood samples from typical patients with Behcet's disease in Iran and Turkey. And it is expected that we could also get the samples from Morocco. Further HLA-DNA analyses will be performed in the near future.