The efficacy of ethnic specific blood groups genotyping for routine donor investigation and rare donor identification in Taiwan

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

BACKGROUND: Large-scale single nucleotide variation (SNV)-based blood group genotyping assays have been made available for over a decade. Due to differences in ethnic groups, there is much diversity in clinically important blood group antigens and genetic variants. Here, we developed a robust matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF)-based blood group genotyping method on MassARRAY system. STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: donors. Forty-two SNVs were designed for determining nine blood groups, with X/Y chromosome in two multiplex reactions, on MassARRAY 96-well format system. Further targeted sequence analyses were performed by Sanger sequencing. RESULTS: WHO reference reagent (NIBSC code: 11/214) was tested for concordance with the provided genotype results. Among the donors, concordance rate was over 99%. Alleles of important phenotypes such as Mi(a+), Di(a+), and Asian-type DEL and alleles of rare blood groups such as Fy(a-), Jk(a-b-) and s- were screened. Three types of discrepancies were found. Serologically, the 'N' antigen was expressed on genetically MM with GYP*Mur red blood cells and caused genuine discrepancies (9.5%). Genetically, allele dropout (ADO) was caused by rare SNV in the primer for Ss genotype (2.1%) and partial insertion of RHD genes (0.9%) led to difficulties in predicting phenotypes. CONCLUSION: Hemo panel module and MassARRAY System in 96-well format showed good performance in terms of large-scale blood group genotyping and phenotype predictions. Implementation of this method is effective for routine blood group genotype screening of donors.