In a collaborative work carried out by the Spanish and Portuguese ISFG Working Group (GEP-ISFG), a polymerase chain reaction multiplex was optimized in order to type ten X-chromosome short tandem repeats (STRs) in a single reaction, including: DXS8378, DXS9902, DXS7132, DXS9898, DXS6809, DXS6789, DXS7133, GATA172D05, GATA31E08, and DXS7423. Using this X-decaplex, each 17 of the participating laboratories typed a population sample of approximately 200 unrelated individuals (100 males and 100 females). In this work, we report the allele frequencies for the ten X-STRs in 15 samples from Argentina (Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Río Negro, Entre Ríos, and Misiones), Brazil (São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, Paraná, and Mato Grosso do Sul), Colombia (Antioquia), Costa Rica, Portugal (Northern and Central regions), and Spain (Galicia and Cantabria). Gene diversities were calculated for the ten markers in each population and all values were above 56%. The average diversity per locus varied between 66%, for DXS7133, and 82%, for DXS6809. For this set of STRs, a high discrimination power was obtained in all populations, both in males (> or =1 in 5 x 10(5)) and females (> or =1 in 3 x 10(9)), as well as high mean exclusion chance in father/daughter duos (> or =99.953%) and in father/mother/daughter trios (> or =99.999%). Genetic distance analysis showed no significant differences between northern and central Portugal or between the two Spanish samples from Galicia and Cantabria. Inside Brazil, significant differences were found between Rio de Janeiro and the other three populations, as well as between São Paulo and Paraná. For the five Argentinean samples, significant distances were only observed when comparing Misiones with Entre Ríos and with Río Negro, the only two samples that do not differ significantly from Costa Rica. Antioquia differed from all other samples, except the one from Río Negro.
