HLA polymorphisms in Sindhi community in Mumbai, India

Summary Indian population is an amalgamation of various ethnicities, cultural and linguistic diversities, primarily due to marriages within a community. HLA‐A, B and DRB1 alleles and haplotype frequencies were investigated in the Sindhi and compared with Marathi, Gujarati and North Indian population from Mumbai. This work is a part of a larger effort aimed at analysis of the HLA profile of diverse Indian ethnics to establish an umbilical cord stem cell panel in India. HLA polymorphisms at the HLA‐A, B and DRB1 loci were determined in 413 cord blood samples by the molecular method of polymerase chain reaction using sequence‐specific primer amplification. The most frequent alleles included A*01, A*02, A*11 and A*24 at A locus, B*35 and B*40 at B locus and DRB1*07 and DRB1*15 in all the four groups, although the frequency fluctuated in individual communities. HLA‐DRB1*03 was significantly high (P