Evaluation of sequence-specific priming and real-time polymerase chain reaction assays for detecting HLA-B*51 alleles confirmed by sequence-based typing.

The human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B*51 genotype is one of the well-known genetic factors associated with the development of Behcet's disease. We evaluated three sequence-specific priming (SSP) assays and one real-time PCR assay for detecting HLA-B*51 alleles using 93 whole blood samples, which were genotyped by high-resolution sequence-based typing (SBT). All HLA-B*51 alleles determined by SBT were detected by the four evaluated assays, and the results for all HLA-B alleles other than HLA-B*51 were negative on all assays. Thus, all HLA-B51 tests showed 100% sensitivity and 100% specificity for detecting HLA-B*51 alleles. The three SSP assays and the real-time PCR test for HLA-B*51 genotyping are simple, but reliable for detecting HLA-B*51 alleles in clinical laboratories.