Coeliac disease research tool

Delfia probes, specific for HLA alleles, provide a research tool for investigating genes involved in predisposition to coeliac disease.

The genetic inheritance to the disease is strongly associated with HLA-DQA1*05-DQB1*02 (DQ2) and HLA-DQA1*03-DGB1*0302 (DQ8) and the hybridisation assay recognises all the relevant alleles. The set of five sequence oligonucleotide probes contains reagents to define the presence of HLA alleles of DQA1*0501-5; DQB1*0201-3; DQB1*0302, 0304-05, 0307-08.

The DQ2 and DQ8 alleles are found among 30% of the general population, so they cannot be used as a diagnostic tool to identify who will get the disease. However, the alleles can be used to exclude the disease as the inheritance is bound to these alleles and without them the person will not have coeliac disease.

Following PCR amplification, the presence of the particular alleles is determined by a hybridisation reaction using allele-specific, short oligonucleotides labelled with lanthanide chelates.