Common human leucocyte antigen haplotypes in Indians – its implications in finding unrelated compatible bone marrow donors

Abstract

All over the world there have been efforts to make unrelated stem cell registries to cater for patients who do not have a compatible family donor and are in need of allogenic stem cell transplantation. Donors of Indian origin are poorly represented all these registries. Approximately 10 million Indians live outside India, and a substantial number of them live in the developed West. Hence when some of these patients of Indian origin need unrelated stem cell donor, they search the available National Marrow Donor Program (NMDP) registry database and invariably do not get a human leucocyte antigen (HLA) matched donor. They come to India, where a haphazard search for the donor ensues and it invariably ends in failure. Hence, we have compiled the data of our laboratory and other published reports in population HLA studies from India and abroad to show several common haplotypes from these studies. It is hoped that this will give the busy clinician an idea whether a search for prospective unrelated stem cell donor for an Indian patient is likely to succeed or not.

The association of HLA‐DRB1 and HLA‐DQB1 alleles with the development of factor VIII inhibitors in severe haemophilia A patients in India

“…The most common alleles were observed to be the DRB1 * 15 and DQB1*05 , DQB1*06 alleles in both the haemophilic and non‐haemophilic groups. This incidence is similar to that reported earlier in the normal Indian population . These alleles were not significantly associated with inhibitor development in Indian haemophiliacs, unlike the associations observed in the German ( DRB1*1501 , DQB1*06:02 , DRB1*15:01 / DQB1*06:02 haplotype significantly higher in inhibitor positive patients) and Thai ( DRB1 * 15 significantly higher in inhibitor patients) study groups .…”

HLA Alleles and Haplotypes in French North African Immigrants

“…Indeed, in spite of the increase in hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) donors in the worldwide registries, the probability of finding an HLA-matched donor for a given patient is well below 100% (approximately 60 -65% in our center) [9] and is extremely low in minority ethnic groups [10].…”

Analysis of high‐resolution HLA‐A, ‐B, ‐Cw, ‐DRB1, and ‐DQB1 alleles and haplotypes in 718 Chinese marrow donors based on donor–recipient confirmatory typings

“…In recent years, transplantation from unrelated donors (URD) is increasingly being used, which partly benefits from the availability of millions of URD volunteers and more efficient donor search processes. Reliable estimates of HLA phenotype frequencies, allele frequencies (AF) and haplotype frequencies (HF) in defined ethnic groups are of theoretical and practical importance in predicting the probability of finding a haplotypically identical related or unrelated bone marrow donor for a patient (Mori et al, 1996;Schipper et al, 1996a;Ghosh et al, 2002) and for estimating the number of donors needed to be added to a registry to increase the percentage of patients who could receive a matched transplantation (Hurley et al, 2003).…”