A Family with Five VeVe Individuals

The Vel Blood Group in Northern Sweden

“…The report of Levine et al [11] with Vel(-) in three successive gener ations was treated with some scepticism at first [14] owing to the dif ficulties in Vel typing, but the Vel(-) individuals in this and later reports of Albrey et al [1] and White and Reinert [25] were tested and con firmed with three anti-Vel sera and seem to be well substantiated. No con sanguinity was known in two of the three families but Albrey et al [1] estimated that the mating of VeaVe x Ve Ve may occur by chance once in 30,000 as the frequency of the genotype VeaVe is about 1:25.…”

“…However, Race and Sanger [16] sug gest that the existence of families with Vel(-) individuals in two and three successive generations [1,11] and sibships with too many Vel(-) present [25] may indicate another mode of inheritance, and that in these families a dominant inhibitor gene, which may or may not be part of the Vel lo cus, could be responsible as has been found in the Lutheran system [23].…”