High incidence of the CD8/9 (+G) b0-thalassemia mutation in Spain

Mediterranean regions the most common b-tha-lassemia mutations are due to point mutations in gene regions that are critical for production of mRNA, such as [IVS-I-nt1 (GÆA), IVS-I-nt6 (TÆC), IVS-I-nt110 (GÆA)] which interrupt normal RNA process-ing or nonsense mutations [CD39 (CÆT)] which interrupt the translation of mRNA. The frameshift mutation CD8/9 (+G) is a very common allele in Asian Indians but is rare in the Mediterranean regions in which isolated alleles with this mutation have bee