Single-nucleotide polymorphisms of HLA and Polygonum multiflorum-induced liver injury in the Han Chinese population

BACKGROUND: Polygonum multiflorum is one of the leading causes of herb-induced liver injury in China. HLA-B*35:01 is reported to be a potential biomarker of Polygonum multiflorum-induced liver injury (PM-DILI). However, little is known about the relationship between single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and PM-DILI. AIM: To identify SNPs that indicate susceptibility to PM-DILI. METHODS: We conducted a systematic study enrolling 382 participants from four independent hospitals, including 73 PM-DILI patients, 118 patients with other drug-induced liver injury (other-DILI) and 191 healthy controls. Whole-exome sequencing was performed for 8 PM-DILI patients and 8 healthy controls who were randomly selected from the above subjects. Nineteen SNPs that showed high frequencies in the 8 PM-DILI patients were selected as candidate SNPs and then screened in 65 PM-DILI patients, 118 other-DILI patients and 183 healthy controls using the MassARRAY system. HLA-B high-resolution genotyping was performed for the 73 PM-DILI and 118 other-DILI patients. The Han-MHC database was selected as a population control for HLA-B analysis. P < 6.25 × 10(-3) after Bonferroni correction was considered significant. RESULTS: The frequencies of rs111686806 in the HLA-A gene, rs1055348 in the HLA-B gene, and rs202047044 in the HLA-DRB1 gene were significantly higher in the PM-DILI group than in the control group [27.2% vs 11.6%, P = 1.72 × 10(-5), odds ratio (OR) = 3.96, 95% confidence interval (CI): 2.21-7.14; 42.5% vs 8.6%, P = 1.72 × 10(-19), OR = 13.62, 95%CI: 7.16-25.9; 22.9% vs 8.1%, P = 4.64 × 10(-6), OR = 4.1, 95%CI: 2.25-7.47]. Only rs1055348 showed a significantly higher frequency in the PM-DILI group than in the other-DILI group (42.5% vs 13.6%, P = 1.84 × 10(-10), OR = 10.06, 95%CI: 5.06-20.0), which suggested that it is a specific risk factor for PM-DILI. rs1055348 may become a tag for HLA-B*35:01 with 100% sensitivity and 97.7% specificity in the PM-DILI group and 100% sensitivity and 98.1% specificity in the other-DILI group. Furthermore, HLA-B*35:01 was confirmed to be associated with PM-DILI with a frequency of 41.1% in the PM-DILI group compared with 11.9% (P = 4.30 × 10(-11), OR = 11.11, 95%CI: 5.57-22.19) in the other-DILI group and 2.7% (P = 6.22 × 10(-166), OR = 62.62, 95%CI: 35.91-109.20) in the Han-MHC database. CONCLUSION: rs111686806, rs1055348, and rs202047044 are associated with PM-DILI, of which, rs1055348 is specific to PM-DILI. As a tag for HLA-B*35:01, rs1055348 may become an alternative predictive biomarker of PM-DILI.