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The HPA-15 (Gov) alloantigen is a biallelic co-dominant system on human platelets, and its alleleHPA-15aandHPA-15bdiffer by an A→C single nucleotide polymorphism at nucleotide 2108 of the coding sequence resulting in a Tyr682Ser substitution in the mature CD109 glycoprotein.Employing the polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism technique, we determined the HPA-15 gene frequencies among 276 subjects of distinct Brazilian ethnic groups including, 15 Caucasians, 15 African Brazilians, 15 Orientals, 106 Amazon Xikrin Indians, 31 Amazon Gaviões Indians and 94 blood donors.The calculatedHPA-15aandHPA-15ballele frequencies found in Caucasians (0.53/0.47), African Brazilians (0.57/0.43), Orientals (0.57/0.43) and Brazilian blood donors (0.52/0.48) did not differ significantly. However, theHPA-15aandHPA-15bgene frequencies of Xikrin Indians (0.78/0.22) were significantly different from that of all other groups (P < 0·01). TheHPA-15a/a,HPA-15a/bandHPA-15b/bgenotype frequencies observed in Gaviões Indians were significantly different from those seen in African Brazilians (P = 0·04) and blood donors (P = 0·017).The present data showed that the distribution of the HPA-15 (Gov) system alleles observed among the Brazilian population is quite similar to the distributions already reported among Asian, Canadian and European populations. Moreover, the data indicated differences in the frequency of the HPA-15 system between Amazon Indians and other distinct Brazilian ethnic groups suggesting that Amerindians would be at higher risk of HPA-15 alloimmunization in the need of receiving blood components collected from blood donors of other ethnic groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]