Premarital and antenatal screening of Hb-Los Angeles.

I have read with admiration the paper by Bahadır et al. entitled “HbD Los Angeles [beta 121(GH4) Glu→Gln] and Hb Beograd [beta 121(GH4) Glu→Val]: implications for their laboratory diagnosis and genetic origins” in the recent issue of the journal [1]. However, I was puzzled regarding the reasons for these studies of HbD Los Angeles, since the presence of this hemoglobinopathy trait even in homozygous forms does not have hematologic consequences, with the exception of HbS-D, as was shown by us 40 years ago [2,3]. Although Hb-D was reported from this country prior to our studies, we were the first to report the mutation site. Therefore, I do not believe that premarital and antenatal determination of this hemoglobinopathy has clinical importance, except for double heterozygosity with sickle cell or thalassemias. Thus, the applications of these implications require some explanation.