ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Immunol.
Sec. Alloimmunity and Transplantation
This article is part of the Research TopicInnovative Approaches to Immunogenetics and Organ TransplantationView all 7 articles
The HLA Landscape of Colombia: A High-Resolution Analysis of 11,576 Blood Donors
Provisionally accepted
Ana Luisa Munoz1*
Daniel Uricoechea2
Lina Andrea Gomez2
Hernán Argote-Bérdugo3Johan Bula3María Alejandra Rueda1Miguel Germán Rueda1Ignacio Briceño2- 1Fundación Banco Nacional de Sangre Hemolife, Bogotá, Colombia
- 2Universidad de La Sabana, Chia, Colombia
- 3Fundación Banco Nacional de Sangre, Barranquilla, Colombia
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BACKGROUND: The highly polymorphic Human Leukocyte Antigen (HLA) system is critical for adaptive immunity and determines compatibility in transfusion and transplantation medicine. Admixed Latin American populations, such as Colombia's trihybrid population, possess unique HLA diversity that remains poorly characterized at high resolution. METHODS: We performed high-resolution HLA typing on 11,576 Colombian blood donors from two distinct regions: the Andean and Caribbean. We analyzed allele and haplotype frequencies, Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium, linkage disequilibrium (LD), and compared genetic distances with global populations via PCA and UPGMA clustering. RESULTS: We identified 565 alleles and 17,317 unique haplotypes, revealing extreme diversity. A few alleles dominated each locus, yet the top 20 haplotypes had a cumulative carrier frequency of only 3.17%, highlighting a fragmented haplotype landscape. Strong LD was observed between class I and II loci (HLA-A~DQB1), indicating conserved extended haplotypes. Genetically, the Colombian cohorts formed a tight cluster, showing closest affinity to Indigenous Chilean populations, suggesting a shared Andean background. DISCUSSION: This study provides the first large-scale, high-resolution HLA map of Colombia, capturing the extensive immunogenetic diversity of an admixed Latin American population. Our findings are vital for improving transplant matching, understanding population-specific disease risks, and advancing equitable genomic medicine in the region
Keywords: Admixed Latin American populations, CarrierFrequency, Colombian blood donors, High-resolution HLA typing, HLA Diversity, Population relationship, transfusion and transplantation medicine
Received: 31 Oct 2025; Accepted: 30 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Munoz, Uricoechea, Gomez, Argote-Bérdugo, Bula, Rueda, Rueda and Briceño. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ana Luisa Munoz
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