For a long time I’ve known that people
of African origin have lower neutrophil counts than others. Why is this?
People of African origin are more likely to have the Duffy
null phenotype, Fy(a-b-). Very rare among Caucasian and Asian populations, it
is the most common phenotype in people of African origin, occurring in over
two-thirds of those people.
Low neutrophil count is actually more
strongly associated to the Duffy variant than to ancestry though, suggesting
that the
variant itself causes benign ethnic neutropenia.
Individuals with the Duffy null
phenotype do not express the Duffy protein on their RBCs and therefore are
immune to P. vivax infection.
It’s another thing to do with malaria.
Many years ago (1981 – 1983) when
I was at Brighton Technical College one of our lecturers maintained that every
subject of study had key topics; if you knew about those topics then you knew
everything about that subject of study. He said that for biology the topics
were sex, surface area and the liver.
For haematology one of them is malaria…
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