Human leukocyte antigen class I (A, B and C) allele and haplotype variation in a South African Indian population

In 2013, ∼1,329,300 individuals made up the South African Indian population, which constituted ∼2.5% of the total population of ∼53 million. Historically, from 1860 to 1911, indentured labourers were imported from India, to work in the sugar-cane plantations in the KwaZulu-Natal Province. The local Indian community was further augmented by "passenger" immigrants who paid for passage to South Africa. Extensive HLA allelic variability exists in mainland Indian populations. We investigated HLA-A, -B and -C allele and haplotype diversity in 50 healthy, unrelated individuals recruited from the South African Indian population for comparison to data from mainland India.