Abnormal hemoglobins in Malta : the significance of two fetal and an adult variant

Abstract

The study of human hemoglobin variants has a special place in hemoglobin research. The discovery of hemoglobin F (Malta) by Cauchi et al. (1969) and the high incidence of this hemoglobin in Maltese newborns gave us the opportunity to initiate a systematic study of a fetal hemoglobin variant. During the course of our screening of cord blood samples we have found a new fetal variant, hemoglobin F-Malta-II. We have also found that some families with Hb-F-Malta-II have a new adult hemoglobin variant, which we have called "Hemoglobin St. Luke's". We have redesignated Hb F(Malta) as Hb-F-Malta-I. The purpose of this article is to give briefly the relevance of Hb-F-Malta-I and Hb-F-Malta-II to current concepts of the genetics of the γ-chain of fetal hemoglobin (Huisman et aI., 1972), and to give a brief description of Hb St. Luke's (Bannister et al., 1972).