CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Chronic Superficial Keratitis (CSK) is a progressive, inflammatory and potentially blinding disease of the canine bilateral cornea. The German shepherd is the most commonly affected breed. CSK have been described as an immune-mediated disease. The increased MHC class II expression may play a part in perpetuating the corneal inflammation seen in the disease. Given the previously reported association between the CSK and up-regulation of major histocompatibility class II antigen expression, the primary goal of this work is to determine the association between the Dog Leukocyte Antigen system (DLA) and the disease in German Shepherd dogs. Blood samples were collected from twelve dogs with pannus and twelve control dogs. The polymorphism of DLA-DQA, -DQB and -DRB promoters, and four DLA linked microsatellites was genotyped. Genetic diversity was calculated for each locus, and association between genetic markers and presence/absence of pannus was evaluated. Preliminary results showed that: (i) the allele DLA-DQA1-DQA*p1a is fixed in both subpopulations; (ii) two alleles of the DLA-DRB1 promoter (DLA-DRB1*p1 and DLA-DRB1*p2) were detected with similar gene frequencies in both groups; (iii) we have only detect one (DLA-DQB*7) out of four DLA-DQB alleles reported in German Shepherd, as well as, the allele DLA-DQA*p1; (iv) three putative new DLA-DQB promoter variants were detected in our sample; (v) not significant differences were observed between illness and control group for the microsatellites FH2200 and FH2202; (vi) significant differences between pannus and control for the loci FH2054 and FH2975 (pFH2054 = 0.00744; pFH2975 =0.003214) were observed; (vii) a relative risk of 6.25 and 2.75 for the alleles FH2054*152 and FH2579*320, respectively, were calculated; and (viii) an odds ratio of 9 and 3.4 for these alleles, respectively, were estimated.