Mongolian admixture in Poland

Mongolian admixture in Poland

Transfus Med. 2003 Jun;13(3):161-3.
The first example of anti-Diego(b) found in a Polish woman with the Di(a+b-) phenotype and haemolytic disease of the newborn not requiring treatment.
Lenkiewicz B, Zupanska B.
All pregnant women with anti-Diegob (anti-Dib) described so far were non-Caucasians. We present the case of a Polish Di(a+b-) woman with anti-Dib, which did not bind complement, was immunoglobulin G3 (IgG3) alone and had very low functional activity. She delivered a Di(a+b+) infant with a positive direct antiglobulin test and the antibody in his serum but very mild haemolytic disease. Both parents of the pregnant woman were Di(a+b+), so were all her three children. The whole family have been living in a small village in southeastern Poland for a long time. The rare Diego phenotypes, found now and previously in Poland, suggest gene admixture introduced as a result of Poland being invaded by Mongolian-background Tatars during the past centuries.
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This is not the first time that a very rare phenotype of the Diego system was detected in Poland. Amongst 9661 Poles tested, 45 (0·47%) were found to have Di(a+) antigen (Kusnierz-Alejska & Bochenek, 1992). Thus, its incidence is much higher than that seen in any other White population tested (Issitt & Anstee, 1998). This observation was attributed to the very probable gene admixture resulting from several military invasions of Poland by Tatars of Mongolian background in the past (Kusnierz-Alejska & Bochenek, 1992); it is known that Di(a+) is mainly found in people from the East (Issitt & Anstee, 1998).
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The possibility of the influence of people from the East on the frequency of certain antigens in the Polish population is also consistent with our previous observations on the incidence of human platelet antigen (HPA) genotypes. The frequency of HPA-2 and HPA-5 alleles in Poles was similar to that in Far East nations (Drzewek et al., 1998).
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