| Summary: | MHC complex is the most polymorphic, most complex and one of the most important parts of human genome which participates in the immune response. MHC in humans is known as HLA complex (human leukocyte antigen), and consists of about 224 genes (Beck et al., 1999; Robinson et al., 2000). HLA genes are well known risk factors associated with number of autoimmune diseases (Beck et al., 1999). Idiopathic inflammatory myopathy belongs to the systemic autoimmune diseases. It is a disease with clinical manifestation of chronic muscle inflammation with a destruction of muscle cells, leading to a damage of the whole muscles. Idiopathic inflammatory myopathy (IIM) includes several diagnoses - polymyositis (PM), dermatomysitis (DM), cancer associated myositis (CDM), inclusion bodies myositis (IBM), and others. Human MHC complex consists of three parts. First two of them - the MHC class I and MHC class II genes, are already well studied and published results show their associated with numbers of (mostly immune system mediated) diseases. The third part of MHC is located between class I and II antigens and covers an area of about 150 genes. It is also called "non Class I/II" antigens (Beck et al., 1999; Carole et al., 1988; Lie, Thorsby, 2005). My work was focused on three MHC-located genes, which are known to be...
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