Prenatal diagnosis of beta thalassaemia by reverse phase HPLC.

Reverse phase HPLC of radioactive globin chains has been compared to classical carboxy methyl cellulose chromatography for the prenatal diagnosis of beta thalassaemia. The two methods correlated highly (r = 0.97 p less than 0.0005) and provided an identical diagnosis for 40 fetal blood samples of fetuses homozygous or heterozygous for beta thalassaemia. The HPLC procedure was much faster and required fewer biochemical steps (no globin preparation). It was at least as accurate and more sensitive than the classical chromatography. A single column can be used for 150 analyses and is always ready to be used. Last but not least it is much less expensive than CMC chromatography.