[Hemoglobinopathies in West-African immigrant workers in France (author's transl)]

In this paper are brought the results obtained in two Parisian hospitals during a survey of abnormal hemoglobins in 540 immigrant workers coming from Africa, mostly from Mali, Mauritania and Senegal. All the subjects investigated were male and between 20 and 40 years old. The studies were performed following internationally standardized technics. The most frequent abnormalities were: Hb S found in 16.3%, Hb C (6.6%), alpha-thalassemia trait (3.1%) and beta-thalassemia trait (3.1%). Some rare abnormalities were also found: delta-chain variants, hereditary persistance of foetal hemoglobin, Hb Hope and Hb Grady. This work emphasizes the high frequency of the different hemoglobin disorders in this population. The easy diagnostic of electrophoretically detectable variants is compared to the more complex situation of thalassemia leading probably to an under estimation of the percentage.