Frequency of neutrophil alloantigens by polymerase chain reaction

OBJECTIVE: Neutrophil alloantigens are responsible for a number of immune clinical disorders such as neonatal alloimmune neutropenia, febrile transfusion reaction and transfusion related acute lung injury. Recent progress enabled typing of neutrophil antigens by deoxyribose nucleic acid based techniques. In this study we report for the first time the frequency distribution of human neutrophil antigen system-one in Saudis.

METHODS: Blood samples were collected from 100 successive healthy Saudi male blood donors presenting to Regional Laboratory and Blood Bank, Dammam, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1997. Human neutrophil antigen typing was carried out using polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific primer method.

RESULTS: Our results show that human neutrophil antigen system-one is highly polymorphic in this population and similar in its distribution to the Hispanic and Native Americans but different from the Caucasians, Indians and Africans.

CONCLUSION: We found the polymerase chain reaction-sequence specific primer method to be a practical technique for neutrophil alloantigen typing. We recommend introducing this technology in tertiary care hospitals to allow easier diagnosis of immune neutropenias.