IN recent work on the serum iron and total iron-binding capacity of groups of healthy and diseased Africans, we found the total iron-binding capacity of pellagra patients to be approximately 60 per cent of healthy controls1. Zone electrophoresis on filter paper in an earlier work2 did not show that the concentration of the β-globulins in pellagra was any lower than healthy controls and this suggested that there may be a relationship between transferrin polymorphism and incidence of this disease, in view of the findings of Gibbett et al.3 that the faster-migrating transferrins take up more iron.