After ABO, Rhesus (Rh) is the second most clinically important blood group regarding transfusion
and pregnancy induced alloimmunisation. RhD DEL is a subtype of variant RhD, which is difficult to
determine in a routine blood bank, since it expresses an extremely low level of D antigens. Serologically,
it can only be detected via adsorption-elution test. To date, there have been limited data available on the
Rhd DEL phenotype in Malaysia. Thus, this study was carried out to detect DEL phenotype among RhD
negative donors in Malaysia. A total of 43 RhD-negative blood samples were collected from National
Blood Centre, Malaysia. Rh phenotype for each sample was tested, followed by adsorption elution
technique. Then, identification of DEL carrying RHD1227A allele was performed via SSP-PCR. Rhphenotype
identified were ccee (79.07%), Ccee (13.95%), 4.65% of ccEe phenotype and only 2.33% of
CCee phenotype. One (2.3%) out of the 43 samples was identified as DEL phenotype carrying RHD1227A
allele when tested using SSP-PCR, but none was identified from adsorption-elution. A larger sample
size is recommended to determine the exact prevalence of DEL phenotype, as well as specificity and
sensitivity between SSP-PCR as compared with the traditional adsorption elution technique.