When was blood first typed

It only has H antigens, which are present in the other blood types too. To a person with type A or type B, it seems familiar.

That familiarity makes people with type O blood universal donors, and their blood especially valuable to blood centres. Landsteiner reported his experiment in a short, terse paper in But as Landsteiner answered an old question, he raised new ones. What, if anything, were blood types for? Why should red blood cells bother with building their molecular houses? And why do people have different houses?

Solid scientific answers to these questions have been hard to come by. And in the meantime, some unscientific explanations have gained huge popularity. Type AB, he argued, is a modern blending of A and B. With my agriculture-based type A blood, for example, I should be a vegetarian. People with the ancient hunter type O should have a meat-rich diet and avoid grains and dairy. As a result, doctors often get asked by their patients if blood type diets actually work. The best way to answer that question is to run an experiment.

Eighteen years later, however, the data from this trial have not yet been published. They hunted through the scientific literature for experiments that measured the benefits of diets based on blood types. Although they examined over 1, studies, their efforts were futile. In spite of the lack of published evidence supporting his Blood Type Diet, he claimed that the science behind it is right.

Different strokes Comparisons to Einstein notwithstanding, the scientists who actually do research on blood types categorically reject such a claim. Nevertheless, some people who follow the Blood Type Diet see positive results. El-Sohemy is an expert in the emerging field of nutrigenomics. He and his colleagues have brought together 1, volunteers to study, tracking the foods they eat and their health.

They are analysing the DNA of their subjects to see how their genes may influence how food affects them. Two people may respond very differently to the same diet based on their genes. As a scientist, he found Eat Right 4 Your Type lacking. But El-Sohemy realised that since he knew the blood types of his 1, volunteers, he could see if the Blood Type Diet actually did people any good. El-Sohemy and his colleagues divided up their subjects by their diets.

The scientists gave each person in the study a score for how well they adhered to each blood type diet. The researchers did find, in fact, that some of the diets could do people some good. People who stuck to the type A diet, for example, had lower body mass index scores, smaller waists and lower blood pressure. People on the type O diet had lower triglycerides. The type B diet — rich in dairy products — provided no benefits. Anyone on a type O diet cuts out lots of carbohydrates, with the attending benefits of this being available to virtually everyone.

Monkey business One of the appeals of the Blood Type Diet is its story of the origins of how we got our different blood types. But that story bears little resemblance to the evidence that scientists have gathered about their evolution. It turned out that some primate species had blood that mixed nicely with certain human blood types. But for a long time it was hard to know what to make of the findings. The evolutionary cause, or at least one of them, appears to be disease.

For example, malaria appears to be the main selective force behind type O, according to Christine Cserti-Gazdewich, a hematologist at Toronto General Hospital. Type O is more prevalent in Africa and other parts of the world that have high burdens of malaria, suggesting that blood type carries some sort of evolutionary advantage.

In this particular case, the advantage appears to be that cells infected with malaria don't stick well to type-O or type-B blood cells, Cserti-Gazdewich said. Malaria-infected blood cells are more likely to stick to cells with the A sugar and to form clumps known as "rosettes," which can be deadly when they form in vital organs, such as the brain.

In its first year of operation its blood was used in 1, blood transfusions. Today Blood Banks are instrumental in collecting donated blood for use in transfusions and to make a range of blood products.

According to Australian Red Cross Lifeblood:. A wealth of information and resources for health professionals about the use of blood products can be found at www. MIGA has not taken into account your personal objectives or situation. Before you make any decisions about our policies, please review the relevant Product Disclosure Statement which can be found here and consider your own needs.

Home Articles tafe. Print: Share:. Following is a brief history leading to his discovery which has saved millions of lives. The discovery of blood types After decades of low success rates, and dozens of dead patients, the mystery was solved in when Austrian physician Karl Landsteiner took samples of blood from six healthy scientists including himself and decided to see what would happen if they were mixed together in a test tube.

For example, people with type A blood have A antigens on their red blood cells and make antibodies that attack B antigens; people with type B blood have B antigens on their red blood cells and make antibodies that attack A antigens.

This is hard to keep track of, so I hope the chart below helps! After Landsteiner determined the pattern of the ABO blood group, he realized blood types are inherited, and blood typing became one of the first ways to test paternity. People who are type AB inherit an A gene from one parent and a B gene from the other.

This chart lists the antigens and antibodies made by the different ABO blood types. Clearly, people who are type O— the most common blood type —do just fine without them.