Marketing Scoops: A New Blood Group Has Been Discovered

National Institutes of Health/SPL

Researchers have made heart, gut, liver and lung organoids that can grow their own blood vessels. Most organoids lack the vessels necessary to transport blood, oxygen and nutrients, which has restricted their size, function and ability to mature. The research teams grew vascularized organoids by coaxing stem cells to form vessels as the rest of the tissue was growing, rather than trying to add blood vessels later as previous attempts have…….Continue reading…..

By : Flora Graham

Source: Nature

Critics:

A complete blood type would describe each of the 48 blood groups, and an individual’s blood type is one of many possible combinations of blood-group antigens. Almost always, an individual has the same blood group for life, but very rarely an individual’s blood type changes through addition or suppression of an antigen in infection, malignancy, or autoimmune disease. Another more common cause of blood type change is a bone marrow transplant.

Bone-marrow transplants are performed for many leukemias and lymphomas, among other diseases. If a person receives bone marrow from someone of a different ABO type (e.g., a type O patient receives a type A bone marrow), the patient’s blood type should eventually become the donor’s type, as the patient’s hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are destroyed, either by ablation of the bone marrow or by the donor’s T-cells.

Once all the patient’s original red blood cells have died, they will have been fully replaced by new cells derived from the donor HSCs. Provided the donor had a different ABO type, the new cells’ surface antigens will be different from those on the surface of the patient’s original red blood cells. Some blood types are associated with the inheritance of other diseases; for example, the Kell antigen is sometimes associated with McLeod syndrome. Certain blood types may affect susceptibility to infections, such as the resistance to specific

malaria species seen in individuals lacking the Duffy antigen. The Duffy antigen, presumably as a result of natural selection, is less common in population groups from areas having a high incidence of malaria.The Rh system (Rh meaning Rhesus) is the second most significant blood-group system in human blood transfusion, with currently 50 antigens. The most significant Rh antigen is the D antigen, because it is the most likely to provoke an immune system response of the five main Rh antigens.

It is common for D-negative individuals not to have any anti-D IgG or IgM antibodies, because anti-D antibodies are not usually produced by sensitization against environmental substances. However, D-negative individuals can produce IgG anti-D antibodies following a sensitizing event: possibly a fetomaternal transfusion of blood from a fetus in pregnancy or occasionally a blood transfusion with D-positive RBCs.

Rh negative blood types are much less common in Asian populations (0.3%) than they are in European populations (15%). The presence or absence of the Rh(D) antigen is signified by the + or − sign, so that, for example, the A− group is ABO type A and does not have the Rh (D) antigen. As of June 2025, 48 blood-group systems have been identified and are recognized by the International Society for Blood Transfusion.Thus, in addition to the ABO antigens and Rh antigens, many other antigens are expressed on the RBC surface membrane.

For example, an individual can be AB, D positive, and at the same time M and N positive (MNS system), K positive (Kell system), Le^a or Le^b negative (Lewis system). Many of the blood group systems were named after the patients in whom the corresponding antibodies were initially encountered. Blood group systems other than ABO and Rh pose a potential, yet relatively low, risk of complications upon mixing of blood from different people.

To provide maximum benefit from each blood donation and to extend shelf-life, blood banks fractionate some whole blood into several products. The most common of these products are RBCs, plasma, platelets, cryoprecipitate, and fresh frozen plasma (FFP). FFP is quick-frozen to retain the labile clotting factors V and VIII, which are usually administered to patients who have a potentially fatal clotting problem caused by a condition such as advanced liver disease, overdose of anticoagulant, or disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC).

Units of packed red cells are made by removing as much of the plasma as possible from whole blood units. Clotting factors synthesized by modern recombinant methods are now in routine clinical use for hemophilia, as the risks of infection transmission that occur with pooled blood products are avoided.

Blood group AB individuals have both A and B antigens on the surface of their RBCs, and their blood plasma does not contain any antibodies against either A or B antigen. Therefore, an individual with type AB blood can receive blood from any group (with AB being preferable), but cannot donate blood to any group other than AB. They are known as universal recipients.
Blood group A individuals have the A antigen on the surface of their RBCs, and blood serum containing IgM antibodies against the B antigen. Therefore, a group A individual can receive blood only from individuals of groups A or O (with A being preferable), and can donate blood to individuals with type A or AB.
Blood group B individuals have the B antigen on the surface of their RBCs, and blood serum containing IgM antibodies against the A antigen. Therefore, a group B individual can receive blood only from individuals of groups B or O (with B being preferable), and can donate blood to individuals with type B or AB.
Blood group O individuals have no A or B antigens on the surface of their RBCs, and their blood serum contains IgM anti-A and anti-B antibodies. Therefore, a group O individual can receive blood only from a group O individual, but can donate blood to individuals of any ABO blood group (i.e., A, B, O or AB).
If a patient needs an urgent blood transfusion, and if the time taken to process the recipient’s blood would cause a detrimental delay, O-negative blood can be used. Because it is compatible with anyone, there are some concerns that O-negative blood is often overused and consequently is always in short supply.
According to the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies (AABB) and the British Chief Medical Officer’s National Blood Transfusion Committee, the use of group O RhD negative red cells should be restricted to persons with O negative blood, women who might be pregnant, and emergency cases in which blood-group testing is genuinely impracticable.

Blood plasma compatibility is the inverse of red blood cell compatibility. Type AB plasma carries neither anti-A nor anti-B antibodies and can be transfused to individuals of any blood group; but type AB patients can only receive type AB plasma. Type O carries both antibodies, so individuals of blood group O can receive plasma from any blood group, but type O plasma can be used only by type O recipients.

In addition to the current practice of serologic testing of blood types, the progress in molecular diagnostics allows the increasing use of blood group genotyping, commonly known as red cell genotyping. In contrast to serologic tests reporting a direct blood type phenotype, genotyping allows the prediction of a phenotype based on the knowledge of the molecular basis of the currently known antigens.

This allows a more detailed determination of the blood type and therefore a better match for transfusion, which can be crucial in particular for patients with needs for many transfusions to prevent alloimmunization.A popular pseudoscientific belief in Eastern Asian countries (especially in Japan and South Korea ) known as 血液型 ketsuekigata / hyeoraekhyeong is that a person’s ABO blood type is predictive of their personality, character, and compatibility with others.

Researchers have established no scientific basis exists for blood type personality categorization, and studies have found no “significant relationship between personality and blood type, rendering the theory ‘obsolete’ and concluding that no basis exists to assume that personality is anything more than randomly associated with blood type.

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