Results of assessment of HLA antigens in hypertrophic cardiomyopathies in the world literature are very controversial. Work dealing with this problem in sufficiently large groups of patients is lacking, i.e. work which takes into account different functional and morphological forms of the disease. The authors made therefore a detailed investigation of 60 class 1 and 2 antigens in 117 patients with this disease. Values of the relative risk and chi 2 test revealed a number of possible associations. After correction for the number of examined antigens a significantly higher prevalence was proved only in HLA-B21 in patients with the obstructive form and in patients with advanced myocardial hypertrophy (thickness of more than 30 mm). Examination of HLA antigens can have in the mentioned cases a certain importance during comprehensive examinations of not quite typical forms of the disease. Carriership of antigen B21 is associated with an increased risk of serious cardiological disease, manifested already in young age.

Keywords: Adolescent; Adult; Aged; Cardiomyopathy, Hypertrophic /genetics/; Child; Female; HLA Antigens /analysis/; Humans; Male; Middle Aged; Myocardium /pathology/