The Incidence and Types of Thalassaemia‐Trait Carriers in Israel

The Israeli population has been found to be heterogeneous by the use of a number of genetic markers (Ramot, Duvdevani‐Zikert and Kende, 1962; Szeinberg, Sheba and Adam, 1958; Sohar, Pras, Heller and Heller, 1961; Sheba, Ashkenazi and Szeinberg, 1962; Gurevitch, Hasson, Margolis and Poliakoff, 1954). The presence of thalassaemia among Buchara and Kurdish Jews has been previously described by Schieber (1945) and by Matoth, Shamir and Freundlich (1955). This study was undertaken to determine (a) the frequency of thalassaemia among different Jewish ethnic groups, and (b) the frequency of an increase in haemoglobin A2 among thalassaemia carriers in our population.