Abstract

Yazd City (1,200,000 inhabitants) is placed in the middle of its Iran desert province and it was constructed on a oasis in ancient times.However,it was a central point on the Silk Road and merchants from both Asia and Mediterranean/European areas crossed through Yazd City.We have studied HLA-A,-B,-DRB1 and DQB1 alleles in Yazd population.Analysys of nine most frequent extended class I and class II haplotypes shows that four of them are specific of this population.The other six haplotypes are also found in Asian and Mediterranean populations in significant frequency. This supports that the nowadays relatively isolated in desert Yazd area also contains people that may bear HLA genes probably originated because of long lasting merchants route between Europe and Asia through the European/Asian Silk Road in addition to other HLA genes close to other Iranian populations, including Kurds.