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Medical genetics

A marker for Stevens–Johnson syndrome

Abstract

Stevens–Johnson syndrome and the related disease toxic epidermal necrolysis are life-threatening reactions of the skin to particular types of medication1,2,3. Here we show that there is a strong association in Han Chinese between a genetic marker, the human leukocyte antigen HLA–B*1502, and Stevens–Johnson syndrome induced by carbamazepine, a drug commonly prescribed for the treatment of seizures. It should be possible to exploit this association in a highly reliable test to predict severe adverse reaction, as well as for investigation of the pathogenesis of Stevens–Johnson syndrome.

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Correspondence to Yuan-Tsong Chen.

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The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Supplementary information

Supplementary Table S1 and S2

Supplementary Table S1: Clinical data of patients with carbamazepine-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome; Supplementary Table S2: Demographic variables, dosage and duration of carbamazepine (CBZ) exposure in CBZ-induced Stevens-Johnson syndrome (SJS) and CBZ tolerant patients as well as normal subjects. (DOC 34 kb)

Supplementary Methods

Presents the procedure for patients and control subjects recruitment, criteria for phenotype definition, PCR primers sequences for HLA-B allele typing, and statistical analysis. (DOC 24 kb)

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Chung, WH., Hung, SI., Hong, HS. et al. A marker for Stevens–Johnson syndrome. Nature 428, 486 (2004). https://doi.org/10.1038/428486a

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