Submitted March 8, 2002
Accepted April 16, 2002
DNB: a partial D with anti-D frequent in Central Europe
Franz F Wagner, Nicole I Eicher, Jan R Jorgensen, Cornelie B Lonicer, and Willy A Flegel*
University of Ulm and DRK (German Red Cross)-Blood Donation Service Baden-Wurttemberg - Hessen, Institute Ulm, Department of Transfusion Medicine, Ulm, Germany
SRC (Swiss Red Cross), Blood Transfusion Service, Bern, Switzerland
Department of Clinical Immunology, Skejby Sygehus, Aarhus University Hospital, Regional Blood Transfusion Center, Aarhus, Denmark
Blood Donation Service of the BRK (Bavarian Red Cross), Munchen, Germany
* Corresponding author; email: willy.flegel{at}medizin.uni-ulm.de.
In order 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 6,000 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.
