Transfusion of RhD-Positive Blood in “Asia Type” DEL Recipients

To the Editor: The RhD status of transfusion recipients and donors is routinely matched for red-cell transfusion. This worldwide practice is due to the potent immunogenicity of RhD. In East Asians, the frequency of RhD-negative status is only about 0.3%, which sharply limits the supply of RhD-negative blood. However, approximately 30% of RhD-negative persons carry an RhD variant, termed “Asia type” DEL.1 Beginning in 2008, my colleagues and I organized a collaborative group of 10 laboratories, located in 10 cities in northern, central, and southern China. This group retrospectively evaluated 104 RhD-negative pregnant women with anti-D alloantibodies from 2005 through . . .