The Molecular Defects of α-Thalassemia in the Filipino

Molecular hybridization with synthetic radioactive DNA (cDNA) complementary to a globin mRNA sequences shows that, as in most other Southeast Asian populations, the a globin structural genes are deleted in Filipinos affected by the α-thalassemia syndromes. Thus, all 4 α-globin structural genes are deleted in homozygous α-thalassemia with hydrops fetalis, 3 and 2 structural genes are deleted in hemoglobin H disease and α-thalassemia-1 respectively.