HL‐A Antigens and Antibodies in South African Indians

Abstract

The Indian population of South Africa has been found to have a higher frequency of the antigens HL-A5 and W5 than do either Caucasians or Bantu. Some antisera that appeared to be good anti-HL-A5 or anti-W5 in South African Caucasians gave anomalous results when tested in Indians. The sera of 1,000 Indian women were tested for lymphocytotoxic antibodies and those sera found to contain antibodies were tested in parallel with known antisera against the cells of 150 Indians.We tested for 10 antigens at the first locus, HL-A1, 2, 3, 9, 10, 11, W28, W19, Te63 ( = W19-1) and Te66 ( = W19-4) and a t the second locus for 12 antigens, HL-A5, 7, 8, 12, 13, W5, W14, W15, W17, W22, W27 and W10.The frequency of HL-A1 is 22 96, which agrees with the Caucasian origin of the Indian population. There apparently are subdivisions of H L A 5 and W5, and one serum was found to be a "short" W10. HL-A11 has a relatively high frequency in Indians and may also be subdivided.

Subdivision of HL‐A5 and Comparative Studies of the HL‐A Polymorphism in South African Indians

“…A previous investigation (Hammond et al 1972b) revealed significant differences in the reaction patterns of different anti-HL-A5 sera when tested in the Indian population of Durban. Further work is described in this paper.…”