Frequency of RHD variants in serologically weak D Turkish blood donors.

Abstract

Background: RhD typing has remained of primary importance, as being the leading cause of hemolytic disease ofthe newborn. Among Rh system’s 55 blood group antigens, RhD is the most immunogenic. We aimed with thisstudy to determine weak D/partial D variant frequency in blood donors who were admitted to our blood centerand have serologically designated blood group weak D.Materials and methods: We screened blood donors who admitted between 2011 and 2017 to our blood center.Sixty-seven serologically weak D phenotyped donors have participated in the study. These donors’ samples werestudied further by Polymerase Chain Reaction Sequence- Specific Primers (PCR-SSP) for determining D variants.Results: Weak D phenotype was detected in 228(0.12 %) out of 177,554 donors. Sixty-seven of them agreed totake part in the study. The frequency of weak D and partial D was 68.7 % (n = 46), and 22.4 % (n = 15), in order.The most encountered weak D and partial D variant was type 15 and DFR type, respectively.Conclusions: The prevalence of serologically weak D phenotypes varies by race and ethnicity. Turkey is a countrycovering a mixture of European and Asian DNA with different ethnic groups. Thus, our research as giving theoverall distribution of RHD variants from the largest city of Turkey, which may reflect the general ethnicbackground of the country, would help to the establishment of a databank for blood banking. This paper is thefirst molecular study on RHD variants in Turkey. New molecular research would be more reliable and precise.