Authors' response:

Abstract

We would like to thank Dr. Gorroño-Echebarria for these thoughtful comments about human leukocyte antigen (HLA) alleles in patients with the tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis (TINU) syndrome. The report from their group was published after our review was written, and so was therefore not included. 1 Gorroño-Echebarria M.B. Calvo-Arrabal M.A. Albarrán F. Alvarez-Mon M. The tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis syndrome (TINU) is associated with HLA-DR14 in Spanish patients. Br J Ophthalmol. 2001; 85: 1010-1011 Crossref PubMed Google Scholar , 2 Mandeville J.T.H. Levinson R.D. Holland G.N. The tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis syndrome. Surv Ophthalmol. 2001; 46: 195-208 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (281) Google Scholar Dr. Gorroño-Echebarria is indeed correct; there is a pattern of class-II major histocompatibility antigen associations with TINU syndrome that can be discerned in the literature, but the studies have consisted of small numbers of patients using different methodologies, making it difficult to evaluate the results. 1 Gorroño-Echebarria M.B. Calvo-Arrabal M.A. Albarrán F. Alvarez-Mon M. The tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis syndrome (TINU) is associated with HLA-DR14 in Spanish patients. Br J Ophthalmol. 2001; 85: 1010-1011 Crossref PubMed Google Scholar , 2 Mandeville J.T.H. Levinson R.D. Holland G.N. The tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis syndrome. Surv Ophthalmol. 2001; 46: 195-208 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (281) Google Scholar Similarly, while the results from Dr. Gorroño-Echebarria's series are very interesting, it is difficult to draw reliable conclusions based on three patients. We also have been interested in whether specific HLA alleles may be associated with TINU syndrome, and we have therefore conducted a multicenter study in which we collected a substantially larger number of patients, all of whom met our proposed criteria 2 Mandeville J.T.H. Levinson R.D. Holland G.N. The tubulointerstitial nephritis and uveitis syndrome. Surv Ophthalmol. 2001; 46: 195-208 Abstract Full Text Full Text PDF PubMed Scopus (281) Google Scholar for the diagnosis of TINU syndrome. We will be reporting the results in the near future.