Rapid genotyping of human platelet antigen 5 with fluorophore-labelled hybridization probes on the LightCycler

Genotyping of human platelet antigens (HPAs) can be useful for the diagnosi s and therapy of alloimmune thrombocytopenic syndromes such as neonatal all oimmune thrombocytopenic purpura, post-transfusion purpura and refractorine ss to platelet transfusion therapy. We developed a single-tube method for H PA-5 genotyping on the LightCycler that combines rapid-cycle polymerase cha in reaction with allele-specific fluorescent probe melting for mutation det ection. Our method is fast, robust and suitable for routine HPA-5 typing. T his work extends recent studies on HPA-1 typing using the LightCycler.