Between 2008 and April 2018, we recruited more than 37 000 potential Arab donors to the Hadassah Bone Marrow Donor Registry, all of whom were typed for high resolution HLA-A, -B, and -DRB1. In addition, more than 22% of them were also typed for their HLA-C and -DQB1 alleles. A comparison of the sequences obtained from these donors with the IPD-IMGT/HLA Database showed 33 novel alleles from five loci (HLA-A, -B, -C, -DR, -DQ). All of these novel HLA alleles were detected in the local Arab communities; 79% of these alleles have not been described in other groups yet and remain unique to the local Arab communities.
Keywords: Arab; HLA; NGS; novel alleles; sequence.
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