OBJECTIVES

The goal of this study was to verify the prevalence of DEA (dog erythrocyte antigens) in mixed breed dogs and German shepherd reared in Brazil, and to compare to the published data from other countries.

MATERIALS

150 mixed breed dogs and 50 German shepherd were submitted to blood typing test using macro-agglutination tube method and blood reagents commercially obtained from "The immunohematology and serology laboratory" of Michigan State University.

RESULTS

The obtained results for mixed breed dogs were the following: 55% positive for DEA 1.1, 42% for DEA 1.2, 10% for DEA 3; 93% for DEA 4; 8% for DEA 5 and 11% for DEA 7. The obtained prevalence for German shepherd dogs was: 64% positive for DEA 1.1; 36% for DEA 1.2; 8% for DEA 3; 100% for DEA 4; 14% for DEA 5 and 8% for DEA 7. The most common combination of blood groups encountered were: DEA 1.1,4 (representing 46% in mongrels and 35% in GSH) and DEA 1.2,4 (representing 26% in mongrels and 33% in GSH).

CONCLUSION

We found a high prevalence of DEA 1 positive dogs among the two studied groups of dogs. This occurrence was higher than those data described in consulted literature. While there were only 3% of DEA 1-negative dogs among mongrels, we found no DEA 1-negative dog among GSH. This high prevalence may explain the low incidence of acute hemolytic blood transfusion reaction observed in our Veterinary Hospital. Otherwise, the difficulty to find DEA 1 negative dogs also makes very hard to obtain adequate blood donors. The low incidence of DEA 3 and DEA 7 blood groups may explain the eventual occurrence of first transfusion reaction, characterized by the disappearance of red blood cells in 7-10 days post transfusion. The high incidence of DEA 4 blood group has been already described by others.