Clinical heterogeneity of silent-gene b-thalassemia among Indians.

This paper describes six Indian families in which silent-gene beta-thalassemia was encountered by us in the past 2 years. This stresses the importance of globin-chain synthesis in the diagnosis of beta-thalassemia. Of these six cases, five were diagnosed retrospectively when they had a homozygous beta-thalassemia offspring. The beta/alpha synthetic ratios ranged from 0.45 to 0.60. Four belong to group-I silent beta-thalassemia and two cases to group II. The severity of thalassemia major in the offspring of these silent carriers cannot be predicted.