Red blood cell genotypes among the Omani Blood Donor

SUMMARY It is well known that red blood cell allelic and phenotype frequencies vary between different populations. Most data in the literature include frequencies of the phenotypes in the western countries. Blood-group genotyping arrays have been widely used in Caucasian, African American and Asian populations, but have not been tested in subjects of Arab descend. Genotyping of blood donors is extremely useful to obtain rare and a fully typed blood donor database to be used for better matching between blood recipients and the donors to prevent adverse transfusion reactions. Serological typing of large cohorts of donors is a labour-intensive and an expensive exercise that is hampered by the lack of sufficient amounts of approved typing reagents for all blood groups of interest. Currently, genotyping based on DNA micro-arrays is a very feasible alternative. There is no data on red cells genotypes in the Omani and Arab population. This project aims at evaluating, using the Innotrain? genotyping system, the concordance of blood group genotypes with obtained phenotypes based on existing serological methods in Omani blood donors attending the Sultan Qaboos University Blood Bank. Moreover, it aims at studying the prevalence of genotypes of different common and rare red blood cell antigens among the studied subjects.