Haptoglobin and Transferrin Types in the Kuru Region of Australian New Guinea

Haptoglobin Types in Natives from the Kuru Region and other Parts of Melanesia

“…Consequently, it was important to carry out an independent test for this association. This has been done and the results have been placed on record (Bennett, Auricht, Gray, Kirk, and Lai, 1961). Our material did not give any support to the suggested association; the frequencies of the haptoglobin types in kuru victims and in the other Fore natives without kuru chosen for comparison were almost identical.…”

“…At an early stage in the study of the fatal neurological disorder kuru among Fore natives in the Eastern Highlands of Australian New Guinea, Bennett, Rhodes, andRobson (1958, 1959) reported the occurrence of distinctive family patterns in respect of the incidence of the disease. After a detailed examination of the family data which had been obtained by Robson and Rhodes during their field investigations in January, 1958, I was led to put forward very tentatively, and as basis for further study, a single gene model for kuru (Bennett et al, 1958(Bennett et al, , 1959. This suggestion was that kuru might be under the control of autosomal alleles Ku and ku such that, in females, homozygotes KuKu and heterozygotes Kuku would be potential early-onset and late-onset victims respectively, while in males the homozygotes KuKu would be potential kuru victims with the heterozygotes clinically normal.…”

“…Extensive field studies carried out subsequently have shown that the distinctive family patterns in respect of this disease occur generally in the kuru region (Bennett, Gray, and Auricht, 1959). It is not certain, however, that the familial nature of kuru has its only explanation in this genetical basis.…”

A Comparison of Haptoglobin Phenotypes in Haemophilics and Normals in Scotland

“…In many diseases the distribution of haptoglobin types and/or blood groups has been found to accord with those in normal individ uals [2,5,7,8,10,23], and Ikkala [14] confirmed the normality of blood group distribution in haemophilics. In the present investigation no statistically significant difference was found between the hapto globin phenotypes of haemophilics and of normal individuals.…”

“…No clear cut relationship has yet been found between haptoglobin types, transferrin types and speci fic clinical disorders; perhaps, however, as Allison [1] points out, due to the relatively small number of individuals so far tested it would only have shown up had the correlation been high. Reports on such associations have been controversial [7,8,18,27] and it has been re commended that work on this matter should be extended [13].…”