Blood, 15 September 2002, Vol. 100, No. 6, pp. 2253-2256
BRIEF REPORT
DNB: a partial D with anti-D frequent in Central Europe
Franz F. Wagner,
Nicole I. Eicher,
Jan R. Jørgensen,
Cornelie B. Lonicer, and
Willy A. Flegel
From the Department of Transfusion Medicine, University
of Ulm, DRK (German Red Cross) Blood Donation Service Baden
Württemberg
Hessen, Institute Ulm, Germany; Blood Transfusion
Service, SRC (Swiss Red Cross) Bern, Switzerland; Regional Blood
Transfusion Center, Department of Clinical Immunology, Skejby Sygehus,
Aarhus University Hospital, Denmark; and the Blood Donation Service of
the BRK (Bavarian Red Cross), München, Germany.
To improve routine D typing and define transfusion strategy, it is
important to establish the frequency of partial D alleles and their
susceptibility to anti-D alloimmunization due to transfusion or
pregnancy. We identified the partial D DNB that was caused by an
RHD(G355S) allele associated with a CDe
haplotype and whose phenotype presented a normal D in routine typing.
The antigen density was about 6000 D antigens per red blood cell, and
the Rhesus index was 0.02. Five anti-D immunization events with
allo-anti-D titers up to 128 were observed. Twelve carriers of DNB
were whites of Central Europe; the only Danish proband had Austrian
ancestry. DNB was the most frequent partial D recognized so far in
whites, occurring with frequencies of up to 1:292 in Switzerland. DNB was the underlying partial D phenotype in a relevant fraction of anti-D
immunizations occurring in whites.
