Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Bombay Blood Group: A rare and interesting one

Trust me, when I say that tabloid newspapers can throw up interesting pieces of news. Today, I came across this interesting piece of information in Mumbai Mirror.

The Bombay Blood Group is a rare blood group, called so because it was first discovered in Mumbai (then Bombay), by Dr. Y. M. Bhende and his co-workers around the year 1952. This study of theirs has been published in the medical journal Lancet. It is estimated that only 1 in 2,50,000 people are of this blood type. If regular blood testing methods are used, this group type gets classified as belonging to the O-type. That is because they are neutral to reactions related to both, anti-A and anti-B antibodies. This, typically ends up classifying the blood as O-type. However, this category of blood, does not contain or produce the antigen-H, which is found in O-type blood. The blood type gets detected only by cross-matching with other O-type bloods, where blood from the Bombay blood group will show incompatibility to the O-type blood group.

People with such blood can donate blood to anybody (all ABO type), but can receive blood only from their own type. Therefore, if you know anybody who belongs to the Bombay blood group type, ask him/her to contact the NGO, Think Foundation which tries to maintain a database of people of the Bombay blood group.
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