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The incidence of agranulocytosis in clozapine-treated patients is comparatively high despite the undisputed clinical advantages of clozapine.¹ The mechanisms of clozapine-induced agranulocytosis (CA) are debatable²; however, there are some findings indicative of an idiosyncratic drug reaction, pointing to a genetic basis of this adverse effect.³ Some studies suggest that specific HLA haplotypes are associated with a patient's susceptibility to developing CA.^{4, 5, 6, 7, 8} In these studies, HLA subtyping of Jewish and non-Jewish Caucasian patients with and without CA was performed. Clozapine-induced agranulocytosis was associated with HLA-B38, DRB1*0402, DRB4*0101, DQB1*0201, and DQB1*0302 haplotypes in Jewish and HLA-DR*02, DRB1*1601, DRB5*02, and DQB1*0502 in non-Jewish Caucasian patients^{4, 5, 6, 7}; the presence of HLA-B35 seemed to be a protective factor against CA in the latter group.⁸ However, each of these studies had statistical and/or methological shortcomings, such as small sample size, lack of clinical descriptions of study subjects, or insufficient information about the study design.

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