Blood type mystery

Attempts at blood transfusions begin in the Empire era, after the discovery of oxygen and its presence in arterial blood. In 1818, the British obstetrician James Blundell, who by this time had published several experiments on blood transfusion, injected a woman in labor who was dying of postpartum hemorrhage with her husband's blood - and the woman survived. During his professional career, Blundell undertook intravenous blood injections as a last resort in ten more cases, and in half of them patients recovered: blood became the resource that could save the life of another person and which could be shared.

As a rule, people know about eight types of blood: blood can belong to group 0, A, B or AB and have positive or negative rhesus (Rh + and Rh-), which gives eight options. Four groups, discovered by Karl Landsteiner and his students in the 1900s, form the so-called AB0 system.

Independently of Landsteiner's team, four blood groups were identified in 1907 by Czech psychiatrist Jan Jansky, who was looking for a connection between blood and mental diseases - but did not find it and honestly published an article about it. The Rh factor is another system discovered by Landsteiner and Alexander Wiener in 1937 and empirically confirmed by physicians Philip Levin and Rufus Stetson two years later; it got its name because of the similarity of antigens of humans and rhesus monkeys. Since then, however, it turned out that the antigens are not identical, but they did not change the established name. Blood systems are not limited to the Rh factor and ABo: 36 have been opened for 2018.

The novelty of the article. Consists in the analysis of ideas about blood groups. The old ideas that blood and other bodily fluids taken from young people are able to heal and restore youth have not disappeared.

The relevance of the study is due to the fact that ideas about blood groups are replenished from year to year with new ones data, which prompts a historical sketch.

Main part. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the greatest achievement of biology and medicine took place: the Austrian immunologist Karl Landsteiner discovered blood groups. Until this time, it was not possible to avoid complications of blood transfusion from person to person. Almost all attempts to replace blood in humans ended tragically.

The first human blood transfusion from a person was carried out by the English professor of obstetrics and gynecology J. Blundell (1819). He made a blood transfusion to a woman in labor who was dying of blood loss. In 1830 and 1832. similar operations were carried out in Russia by obstetrician-pediatrician S.F. Khotovitsky and obstetrician G.S. Wolf.

Landsteiner's discovery explained the reasons for the failure. Seemingly the same blood was different in the properties of red blood cells, the so-called “red blood cells”. Landsteiner divided the blood of all people into three groups: O, A and B. Somewhat later, the presence of the fourth blood group was established - AB. Blood transfusion has become an effective therapeutic agent that is used in the treatment of many diseases Mazumdar P. M. H. “Blood and Soil: The Serology of the Aryan Racial State”, Bulletin of the History of Medicin, Vol. 64, N. 2, 1990, P. 187-219 [in English]..

In 1930, Karl Landsteiner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine “for his discovery of human blood groups”. The genotype of each a person is unique. The frequent incompatibility of blood during transfusion confirms the fact of human biological diversity. In 1940, Landsteiner and Wiener discovered erythrocyte antigens in the blood of experimental monkeys (rhesus monkeys), which were given the name “rhesus”. Antigens have a protective function. The more Rh-negative individuals in the population, the more often conflict pregnancies occur. In Japanese, hemolytic disease of the newborn, which is caused by Rh antibodies, is quite rare - only 1% of Japanese people have Rh negative blood group. Rh-negative persons are almost fifteen times more common among the population of most European countries. Accordingly, the incidence of diseases associated with incompatibility is higher McMullen E. T. “Anatomy of a Physiological Discovery: William Harvey and the Circulation of the Blood”, Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. 88, N. 9, 1995, P. 491-498 [in English]..

Modern medicine is actively studying the distribution of genetic blood markers for each population, including by geography - throughout the globe. The study of the geographical distribution of blood groups among different peoples was initiated by German doctors - the spouses Hirschfeld. During the First World War, they worked in a field hospital in Macedonia. Blood transfusion to the wounded was accompanied not only by the determination of the group affiliation, but also by the fixation of the accompanying statistical data. By the end of the war, doctors had collected significant material on the frequency of certain blood groups among representatives of different peoples and nationalities. The differences were found to be significant.

Most of the information was collected regarding the ABO system, on which the success of blood transfusion primarily depends.

Subsequently, the English geneticist-hematologist Murant, who worked with the material on the distribution of blood groups around the world, created an atlas of blood groups. O-blood group is most often called the first. It occurs with significant frequency in almost all peoples, but its distribution is uneven. The highest frequency of this blood group (more than 40%) is observed in Europe: Ireland, Iceland, England, Scandinavian countries. A decrease in the frequency of the O-group is observed as we move to the south and southeast. In Asian countries - China, Mongolia, India, Turkey - the O-group among residents is two times less common than in Europe. But there is an increase in the frequency of blood group B. Indians of South and North America in all tribes have only one blood group - O. These distribution patterns have their own explanations Polsky A. D. Blood, Race, and National Identity: Scientific and Popular Discourses, Journal of Medical Humanities, Vol. 23, N. 3-4, 2002, P. 171-186 [in English]..

German scientists Vogel and Pettenkofer in 1962 expressed an interesting hypothesis that that the patterns in the geographical distribution of blood groups of the ABO system are the result of extensive epidemics that raged in the past in these territories.

The antigen B of E. coli is similar to the group antigen of B-human blood. Many strains of viruses that cause influenza, parainfluenza, pneumonia and other infectious diseases contain antigens that resemble the A antigen of the human blood group. Viruses and microbes begin to interact with antigens of the human body and, above all, with antigens of blood groups. This relationship often leads to sad consequences when an infectious pathogen comes into contact with the human body.

The progress of medicine contributes to decrease in mortality from infectious diseases, but they still constitute a significant part of all human diseases. Not so long ago, epidemics of smallpox, plague, cholera, all kinds of fevers swept across the Earth in hurricanes, devastating cities and villages, destroying tribes. However, not all countries were affected by epidemics equally. The centers of plague and smallpox epidemics were Central Asia, India, China, part of North Africa Schneider W.H. “The History of Research on Blood Group Genetics: Initial Discovery and Diffusion”, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Vol. 18, N. 3, 1996, P. 277-303 [in English]..

Blood group O turned out to be the most resistant to smallpox. It became the only one in all tribes that retained an isolated lifestyle and did not enter no contact with other people in America. The work of archaeologists subsequently confirmed these findings. A and B antigens were identified in the bones of Indians who lived many centuries ago, which directly indicates the existence of these blood groups. The selection was very tough if none of these groups were preserved.

The Vogel-Pettenkofer hypothesis ceased to be a hypothesis after an unexpected outbreak of smallpox epidemic in West Bengal (India). Of 200 people with smallpox, 106 (50%) had an A-blood group. Among the non-ill, the frequency of this group was only 25%. The hypothesis has become a proven fact.

A positive reaction to the vaccination most often occurs in children with A - and AB blood groups. The immunity created after the first vaccination is almost completely absent. It turns out that too many still unexplored points remain in the relationship between human blood antigens and the pathogen Vaskilampi T., Hanninen O. Cupping as an Indigenous Treatment of Pain Syndromes in the Finnish Cultural and Social Context, Social

Science & Medicine, Vol. 16, N. 21, 1982, P. 1893-1901 [in English]. 93.

In addition to the ABO system, only Rh antigens have been geographically studied. This knowledge is very important. There is a relationship between the incidence of immuno- incompatible marriages and the proportion in the population of Rh-positive and Rh-negative individuals.

As in Japan, hemolytic disease of the newborn, which is caused by Rh antibodies, is extremely rare among Chinese, Koreans, Indians and residents of other Asian countries. The reason for this is the insignificant frequency among individuals of Rh-negative blood: from 0 to 1.5%

Conclusions. Other blood markers and their geographic distribution are not yet fully understood. However, anthropologists and historians who study the origin of individual peoples, the degree of kinship between them, the paths along which their resettlement once went, are becoming more and more interested in this issue. Human evolution is impossible without a systematic change in the frequencies of genes in the population. Is evolution still ongoing? Opinions are sometimes contradictory. Some believe that man has reached the top of the evolutionary tree and his biological improvement is no longer possible. Others disagree with these findings.

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