Prevalence of thalassaemias in ethnic Saudi Arabians.

A study of the prevalence of alpha- and beta-thalassaemia and the sickle cell gene was carried out on 840 healthy adult male Saudi Arabians of different tribal origins. Complete blood count, haemoglobin electrophoresis and HbA2 estimation were carried out on all. Globin biosynthetic analysis was carried out on all 85 subjects with microcytic red cells and on 180 randomly selected subjects with normal red cell indices. The results showed prevalence of beta-thalassaemia of 3.0%, alpha/beta thalassaemia of 0.9%, alpha-thalassaemia of 43.3% and sickle trait of 5.7%. There were tribal variations in the prevalence of both alpha-thalassaemia and the sickle gene.