ABSTRACT
SBMA (Spinal bulbar muscular atrophy) is a neurodegenerative disease and the extension of the triplet repeat DNA tracks on this SBMA locus is related with the onset of the genetic disease. In this study we investigated the PCR -based STRs (Short Tandem Repeats) polymorphisms for the SBMA locus in healthy South Koreans, Chinese, Japanese and Caucasoids. As the result, we could detect the significant differences among the four populations. And the allele distribution of each population was single modal. The CAG alleles of South Koreans and Chinese showed very similar distributions each other, but the distribution of CAG alleles in Japanese population was clsoer to the one of Caucasoids. The T test after doing the F test also detected the significant difference reflecting this similarity between Japanese and Caucasoids.