Genetic variants of human erythrocyte glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase: new variants in West Africa characterized by column chromatography.

Five electrophoretically slow-moving genetic variants of glucose 6-phosphate dehydrogenase are described: four are from Nigeria and one is from Togo. All variants have normal or moderately reduced activity, and they are not associated with adverse clinical or haematological manifestations. Three variants have been fully characterized and are different from all previously described ones. Two variants have been partially characterized and at least one of them is also probably new. The overall population incidence of sporadic variants of G6PD in the Nigerian population is 0-3%. In the course of this study a previously described ion-exchange chromatographic technique for the characterization of G6PD variants has been extensively evaluated. Data are given on ten different variants to demonstrate the high resolving power of this technique.