HLA and autism.
HLA antigens do not mark autism, so skip immune-typing and stick with behavioral tools.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Doctors took blood from children with autism and from kids without it. They looked at HLA antigens, tiny flags on white blood cells that help the body spot invaders.
The lab used a microlymphocytotoxicity test. It mixes blood with special sera to see which antigens light up.
What they found
No HLA pattern stuck out after the math was fixed for many tests. The team said any small trends could be chance noise.
They urged bigger studies before anyone claims an immune link to autism.
How this fits with other research
Krause et al. (2002) later swept every immune-autism paper and reached the same blank page. Their review folds this 1980 work into a wider null pile.
Kennedy et al. (1993) ran a cousin test, hunting for self-attacking antibodies instead of HLA. They also came up empty, giving the autoimmune story another zero.
Andreo-Martínez et al. (2022) shifted focus to gut bugs, yet the message echoes: biological differences show up, but none so far rewrite how we treat kids.
Why it matters
You can shelve HLA typing as an autism screen. Four decades of follow-up still show no immune smoking gun, so keep your hours for behavior assessment and skill-building. When families ask about fancy immune tests, point to the evidence and stay grounded in what works: reinforcement, prompting, and data.
Want CEUs on This Topic?
The ABA Clubhouse has 60+ free CEUs — live every Wednesday. Ethics, supervision & clinical topics.
Join Free →If a parent mentions HLA or autoimmune tests, share that science finds no link and pivot back to the behavior plan.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The authors, along with other investigators, postulate that viruses may be one of the causes of the syndrome of autism. Many diseases, especially those where a viral infection and autoimmunity is suspected, are being studied to determine whether an association with histocompatibility antigens (human leukocyte antigens--HLA) exists. The authors studied HLA in autism to see if a relationship exists. Twenty autistic children and their parents were HLA typed. The control group consisted of 575 potential donors for renal transplantation, 134 healthy subjects, and 48 persons of different families who married into one large family that had been HLA typed. The control subjects were from the same geographical area as the experimental subjects. Subjects were typed by a modification of the microlymphocytotoxicity tests of Terasaki and McCleland (1964). HLA-A2 was increased when compared to geographical controls, chi 2 = 5.020, p less than .05, and when compared to controls from the literature, chi 2 = 3.88, p less than .05. However, when chi 2 is corrected for the number of antigen specificities, significance is lost. No antigen was significantly increased in the mothers. HLA-A10 was significantly increased in the fathers, chi 2 = 5.947, p less than .02; however, significance did not remain after correction for the number of antigen specificities. These negative findings do not disprove an association because the numbers are so small. This small sample needs to be enlarged and replicated locally as well as in other geographical areas.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 1980 · doi:10.1007/BF02408429