Although quantifying HbA2 using techniques such as capillary electrophoresis or high-performance liquid chromatography is effective in detecting most β-thalassemia traits, identifying α-thalassemia traits remains challenging owing to limited screening tests (Han et al., 2019; Mustafa et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2021; Vachhani et al., 2022). Here, HBA2 is linked to thalassemia.