HLA genetic study in Iran Saqqez-Baneh Kurds: no genetic trace of Aryan invasions in Anatolian Turks and Kurds is found.

Kurds are living at Middle East region comprising several countries (38 million people) and also have emigrated to Asia, Europe and America. Kurds from Iran have been HLA typed in the present work from Saqqez and Baneh towns, Kordestan province, Iran. Origin of Kurds is considered autochthonous from Anatolia and surrounding mountains :they have been referred as "the mountain people" by classic Persian, Greek and Roman authors. Present day Turks are also autochthonous from Anatolia, but they were not recognized by classical authors as living in the mountains and they speak a language of Asian origin that was imposed to Anatolia by a "elite" invasion without a noticeable high Asian gene input. Most frequent class I and class II HLA alleles found in Iranian Kurds population are: HLA-A*24:02, A*02:01 and HLA-B*35:01, and HLA-DRB1*11:01, DRB1*03:02 and HLA-DQB1*03:01; also, most frequent HLA extended haplotypes from this Iran Kurdish sample are not shared with Iranians but with Mediterranean, Turkish and Caucasus people. This is confirmed by Neighbour-Joining and correspondence analysis studied together with the corresponding populations. Finally, our studies show that both Kurds and Turks are genetically original from Anatolian Peninsula and surrounding countries and that an apparent Asian genetic or Aryan invasion does not exist in the area.

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Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.