TITLE:
HLA Class I and II Allele Group Distributions in a Senegalese Kidney Transplantation Cohort
AUTHORS:
Moussa Ndour, Moustapha Mbow, Ndeye Magatte Kebe, Cheikhna Ndiaye, Mairam Mignel Diop, Adama Diaw, Cheikh Dieng, Marouba Cisse, Serigne Abdou Ahad Mbacke Gueye, Maria Faye, Bacary Ba, Baratou Coundoul, Ibrahima Lyra Sarr, Babacar Mbodj, Sidy Mouhamed Seck, Mame Cheikh Seck, Youhanidou Thierno Wone, Babacar Diao, Babacar Mbengue
KEYWORDS:
HLA Typing, Allele Group, rSSO, Histocompatibility, Kidney Transplantation, Senegal, West Africa
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Immunology,
Vol.16 No.4,
October
20,
2026
ABSTRACT: Background: HLA diversity is poorly characterised in West African transplantation programmes. We described harmonised first-field HLA class I and II allele-group assignments, locus-specific typing losses and interlaboratory concordance in a Senegalese transplantation cohort. Methods: Participants were recruited through the MHO-Le Dantec kidney-transplantation programme, resulting in an analytical cohort of 72 individuals (38 recipients and 34 potential donors). HLA-A, -B, -C, -DRB1, -DQA1 and -DQB1 were typed using LABType reverse sequence-specific oligonucleotide assays on a Luminex platform at the Blood Bank, Immunology and Histocompatibility Laboratory of MHO. For the primary analysis, allele assignments were harmonised at the first-field level. Calls with unresolved higher-field information were retained when the first-field group was unambiguous, whereas non-interpretable results were handled separately for each locus. Assignment categories and Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HWE) were analysed independently, with a sensitivity analysis retaining one participant per related donor-recipient pair. In addition, eight samples from four donor-recipient pairs were compared with results from a Turkish laboratory at the highest resolution shared by both laboratories. Results: The most frequent first-field groups were HLA-A*02, HLA-B*35/HLA-B*53, HLA-C*07, HLA-DRB1*13, HLA-DQA1*01/HLA-DQA1*05 and HLA-DQB1*03. Retained genotype counts were 71, 69, 49, 69, 67 and 68 for these six loci, respectively, with corresponding primary allele-assignment denominators of 142, 138, 98, 138, 134 and 136. No locus showed a significant departure from HWE after correction, and the sensitivity analysis did not change the interpretation. All 40 comparable sample-locus genotypes were concordant between laboratories at first-field resolution. Conclusion: This study provides a transparent cohort-level description of HLA diversity and typing completeness in a Senegalese kidney-transplantation programme. The findings are not national population-frequency estimates; larger population-based studies using high-resolution typing and haplotype analysis are required.