HLA-B27 in healthy adults in UAE. An extremely low prevalence in Emirian Arabs

We reviewed the prevalence of HLA-B27 in 760 healthy individuals in the UAE, where the community is multi-ethnic. All were potential live donors for renal and bone marrow transplantation. The overall prevalence rate was 6.4%; 5.7% in Arabs only and 7.4% in the Asian group. Significant intra-racial variation were not observed between the major ethnic groups (P 0.235 and 0.1). Emirian Arabs exhibited a very low prevalence rate of 0.5% which was highly significant in comparison to other Arab subgroups, thus allowing a degree of intra-racial variations of the marker. The pair-wise comparison in all other Arab subgroups did not yield any significant differences. The Yemeni Arabs in this study had the highest rate of 17% and unexpectedly, Arabs with an African admixture (Somalis and Sudanese) also showed relatively high figures.