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Nine hundred and fifty seven individuals from El Limon (Aragua State, Venezuela) were studied, in order to get information on their hematologic, immunologic and biochemical characteristics. The majority of surnames were of Spanish origin although there were also from other European nationalities. No surname from Venezuelan Indians was found. The pathologic hemoglobin variants (Hb S, Hb C and Hb D-Punjab) have a frequency of 4.3%. Eight albumin variants were detected. The hematologic values suggest a high frequency of iron deficiency. Positivity for hepatitis virus B was found in 0.9% of the population. The carriers and patients for hemoglobin variants per generation was calculated for the whole municipality (5062 and 26, respectively). The African component of the population was estimated in around 18%.

Fourteen cases of the Chediak-Higashi syndrome found in twelve non-related families living in a defined geographical area not larger than 200 km2 of the Tachira State, Venezuela (population of around 72,000 inhabitants) were diagnosed between 1967 and 1974. The patients were pre-school or nursing age children except one eleven year old female. Six of the patients were male. All showed the same typical somatic characteristics of this syndrome. Four cases were 2 pairs of brothers. Consanguinity of the parents was seen in only two families, even though the majority of them come from the same restricted geographic zone (Pregonero). Since this anomaly is supposedly produced by a rare recessive autosomal gene, the existence of its high frequency in a small Venezuelan region may be explained through the "founder effect" in a population with a high inbreeding coefficient.

In 58 percent of the Yupa Indians of Venezuela there is a slowmoving transferrin electrophoretically indistinguishable from Tf Dom, which to date, has only been found in Chinese. This finding is additional evidence for the existence of a racial link between South American Indians and Chinese.