MICA-STR A.4 is associated with slower hearing loss progression in patients with Ménière's disease.

Hypothesis: Immune response may influence hearing outcome in Ménière's disease (MD).
Background: Major histocompatibility complex class I chain-related A (MICA) encodes a highly polymorphic stress-inducible protein, which interacts with NKGD2 receptor on the surface of NK, γδ T cells and T CD8 lymphocytes. We investigated the association of MICA gene with hearing outcome in MD and its linkage disequilibrium (LD) with human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B.
Methods: MICA short tandem repeat polymorphism (MICA-STR) was genotyped using a polymerase chain reaction-based method in a total of 302 Spanish patients with MD and 420 healthy controls. Genotyping of HLA-B was performed using polymerase chain reaction and detected with reverse sequence-specific oligonucleotide probe system in 292 patients and 1,014 controls.
Results: Hearing loss was associated with the duration of MD (p = 0.001). We found that MICA*A5 alelle was significantly associated in the Mediterranean set (Pc = 0.04, odds ratio = 0.51 [95% confidence interval, 0.30-0.84]), but this finding was not replicated in the Galicia population. However, median time to develop hearing loss greater than 40 dB was 16 years (95% confidence interval, 9-23) for patients with the MICA*A.4 allele and 10 years (95% confidence interval, 9-11) for patients with another MICA-STR allele (log-rank test, p = 0.0038). We did not find statistical differences in the distribution of B locus between the MD and the control group. In the LD analysis, MICA*A5.1-HLA-B*07 (8.8%), MICA*A6-HLA-B*44 (8.3%), and MICA*A6-HLA-B*51 (8.3%) were the most common haplotypes, and the stronger LD was found for haplotypes MICA*A.4-HLA-B*18 (r2 = 0.41) and MICA*A.4-HLA-B*27(r2 = 0.29).
Conclusion: The allelic variant MICA*A.4 is significantly associated with slower progression of hearing loss in patients with MD. This suggests that the immune response influence hearing level in MD.