Allele-specific oligonucleotide polymerase chain reaction for the determination of Rh C/c and Rh E/e antigens in thalassaemic patients.

BACKGROUND

Thalassaemia is a genetic disease in which there is a relative or complete lack of alpha or beta globin chains. Patients with moderate to severe forms of thalassaemia need transfusions from the early years of life. Antibody production against blood group antigens may cause many problems in preparing compatible blood units for transfusion. The identification of definite blood group phenotypes by the haemagglutination method can be difficult because of the mixed population of red blood cells from the donor and recipient.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Forty multiply transfused thalassaemic patients and ten healthy controls with no history of blood transfusion were enrolled in this study. Allele-specific oligonucleotide polymerase chain reaction (ASO-PCR) and haemagglutination methods were used to determine the presence of Rhesus (Rh) C, c, E and e antigens.

RESULTS

In this study four primer sets were used for ASO-PCR amplification of RhC/c and RhE/e. Although PCR assays for RhC/c and RHE/e genotyping have been described previously, in this study we used a new condition for PCR by decreasing the annealing temperature from 63 °C to 58 °C in order to amplify all four genes in the same condition. In order to evaluate this single run molecular method, we used the haemagglutination test as the standard method and compared the results from the two methods. We found discrepancies between phenotype and genotype results among patients with beta thalassaemia, but complete agreement between phenotype and genotype in the control group.

CONCLUSIONS

The advantage of this new ASO-PCR method compared to a restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) PCR method is that with the former all four genes can be amplified at the same time by PCR, and electrophoresis can be performed immediately to determine individual antigen profiles. The simplicity of the ASO-PCR method makes it suitable for routine use in medical centres and it is also cheaper than RFLP-PCR. Furthermore, as shown by previous studies, the results of haemagglutination and PCR tests often differ because the existence of donor red blood cells in the patient's circulation can interfere with the interpretation of the haemagglutination test.