Thalassemia in Jews from Kurdistan.

By Y. MATOTH, Z. SHAMIR AND E. FREUNDLICH C OOLEY’S ANEMIA has beell reported to occur in members of a wide variety of non-Mediterranean races and ethnic groups.’6 Most of these reports describe sporadic cases. In southern Italians and Greeks, on the other hand, this cotidition is w-idely distributed. These peoples, together with a few smaller and probably genetically related ethnic groups of the easterti ?sIediterratleall area, have, until recently, constituted the only known major reservoir of thalassemia. Reports of a high incidence of thalassemia in Thailand7 and also ill Itidia8 have recently focused attentioll on Asia as another importatlt source of this genetic abnormality. The recetlt mass migration to Israel has afforded an opportunity of studying a tiumber of racial groups from areas in Asia and Africa hitherto relatively inaccessible to medical study. During the past two years, seven cases of Cooley’s anemia were diagnosed in children of Jewish immigrants from Kurdistati. The carrier state, t.halassemia minor, -as idetltified in members of the patients’ families and also ill a considerable proportion of Kurdish patients, hospitalized for other conditiotis, and in the latter’s families. The seven patients and their families to be presetlted in this paper are of interest because they provide evidence that a whole new ethnic group, Jews from Kurdistan, is affected by thalassemia, and that the frequency of this genetic ai)normalitv in Kurdish ,Jews is comparable to that found ill southern Italians and Greeks.