The genotyping of Kell, Duffy, and Kidd System in Korean

Kim, Il Tae; Suh, In Bum; Ma, Kyung Ran; Lim, Chae Seung; Kim, Young Kee; Lee, Kap No

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Among human blood group antigens, the genes for Kell, Duffy, and Kidd antigens have been recently identified, and those can play an important role in unexpected acute and delayed hemolytic transfusion reactions or hemolytic disease of newborns. The determination of blood group polymorphism at the genomic level facilitates the resolution of clinical problems that cannot be addressed by hemagglutination. They are useful to determine antigen types for which currently available antibodies are weakly reactive, type patients who have been recently transfused, identify fetuses at risk for hemolytic disease of the newborn and to increase the reliability of repositories of antigen negative RBCs for transfusion.
METHODS
Two hundred peripheral blood samples were collected from normal population. Primer sets were used with slight modification from Reid M.E, et al. Bsm I, Ban I, and Mnl I were used from digestion of 5 uL PCR products. 10 uL of each digested-PCR products were electrophoresed on agarose or polyacrylamide gel with ethidium bromide staining. Kell, Duffy, and Kidd phenotypes (serologic types) were compared with respective genotypes by PCR-RFLP.
RESULTS
The concordance rate was 100%: between genotype and phenotype 0 case(0%) K, 187 cases(100%) k; 22 cases(11.4%) Fy(a+b+), 171 cases(88.1%) Fy(a+b-), 1 case(0.5%) Fy(a-b+), 0 case(0%) Fy(a-b-); 95 cases(50.8%) Jk(a+b+), 39 cases(20.9%) Jk(a+b-), 53 cases(28.3%) Jk(a-b+), 0 case(0%) Jk(a-b-). In this study, Fyb frequency was 11.9% and it was equal to that of Japan and China. We analyzed each digested PCR product from 200 patients; Kell(187 cases), Duffy(194 cases), and Kidd(187 cases).
CONCLUSIONS
The PCR-RFLP method can be effectively used for the Kell, Duffy, and Kidd typing and is particularly useful in cases where serological typing method is difficult as in autoimmune hemolytic anemia or recently transfused red blood cells in their circulation. Also, it is useful in cases of hemolytic disease in newborns and hemolytic transfusion reaction.