The absence of seroconversion after exposition to hepatitis C virus is not related to KIR-HLA genotype combinations (GEHEP-012 study).

Background & Aims: It has been reported that specific killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) and HLA genotype combinations, such as KIR2DS4/HLA-C1 with presence of KIRDL2 or KIRDL3, homozygous KIRDL3/HLA-C1 and KIR3DL1/≥2HLA-Bw4, are strongly associated with the lack of active infection and seroconversion after exposition to hepatitis C virus (HCV).
Objective: To determine whether these KIR-HLA combinations are relevant factors involved in that phenotype.
Patients and Methods: In this retrospective case-control study, genotype data from a genome-wide association study previously performed on low susceptibility to HCV-infection carried out on 27 high-risk HCV-seronegative (HRSN) individuals and 743 chronically infected (CI) subjects were used. HLA alleles were imputed using R package HIBAG v1.2223 and KIR genotypes were imputed using the online resource KIR*IMP v1.2.0.
Results: It was possible to successfully impute at least one KIR-HLA genotype combination previously associated with the lack of infection and seroconversion after exposition to HCV in a total of 23 (85.2%) HRSN individuals and in 650 (87.5%) CI subjects. No KIR-HLA genotype combination analyzed was related to the HRSN condition.
Conclusions: Our results suggest that those KIR-HLA genotype combinations are not relevant factors involved in the lack of infection and seroconversion after exposition to HCV. More studies will be needed to completely understand this phenotype.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper. Carmen Martín-Sierra, María José Bravo, María Eugenia Sáez, Itziar De Rojas, Marta Santos, Jesica Martín-Carmona, Anaïs Corma-Gómez, Alejandro González-Serna, José Luis Royo, Juan A Pineda, Antonio Rivero, Antonio Rivero-Juárez, Juan Macías, Luis Miguel Real.
(Copyright © 2024 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)