Blood type O patients may have higher risk of death from severe trauma

Good thing I had an ischemic stroke rather than a bleeder. But these benefits from type O:

‘O’ blood type might be protective against dementia.

Non-O blood groups associated with higher risk of heart attack

 

 

Blood type O patients may have higher risk of death from severe trauma 

Blood type O is associated with high death rates in severe trauma patients, according to a study published in the open access journal Critical Care that involved 901 Japanese emergency care patients.

Researchers at Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital, Japan found that severe trauma patients (those with an injury that has the potential to cause long-term disability or death) with blood type O had a death rate of 28%, compared to a rate of 11% in patients with other blood types.

Dr. Wataru Takayama, the corresponding author said: “Recent studies suggest that blood type O could be a potential risk factor for hemorrhage (bleeding in large quantities). Loss of blood is the leading cause of death in patients with severe trauma but studies on the association between different blood types and the risk of trauma death have been scarce. We wanted to test the hypothesis that trauma survival is affected by differences in blood types.”

Patients with blood type O have been shown to have lower levels of von Willebrand factor, a blood clotting agent, than those with other blood types. Lower levels of von Willebrand factor may be linked to higher levels of haemorrhage. The authors suggest that a lower level of the factor is a possible explanation for the higher death rate in trauma patients with blood type O.

Wataru Takayama said: “Our results also raise questions about how emergency transfusion of O type red blood cells to a severe trauma patient could affect homeostasis, the process which causes bleeding to stop, and if this is different from other blood types. Further research is necessary to investigate the results of our study and develop the best treatment strategy for severe trauma patients.”

The authors used data from medical records of 901 patients with severe trauma who had been transported to either of two tertiary emergency critical care medical centers in Japan during 2013 to 2016.

The authors caution that all the patients whose data was analyzed in this study were Japanese and therefore there is a need for further research to understand if the findings apply to other ethnic groups. Additionally, there was no evaluation of the impact of the individual blood types A, AB or B on severe trauma death rates. Instead, the authors compared type O to non-O blood type which may have diluted the effect of individual blood types on patient survival.

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Notes to editor:

1. Research article:
The impact of blood type O on mortality of severe trauma patients: A retrospective observational study
Takayama et al. Critical Care. 2018.
DOI: 10.1186/s13054-018-2022-0

The article is available at the journal website.

Why Men With This Blood Type Are More Likely to Have a Heart Attack

I'm good, type O negative, universal donor. Women you are on your own. Stump your doctor and ask about your von Willebrand factor.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/%E2%80%8Bwhy-men-with-this-blood-type-are-more-likely-to-have-a-heart-attack/ar-BBAKuRk?

Are you at risk?

If you don’t know your blood type, you might want to pick up the phone and ask your mom. That’s because it may tell you more about your health than you think—in fact, back in March, we reported that blood types can predict which men get better erections.

Now, it may point to something more deadly, too: Your blood type may help determine if you’re at risk of a heart attack, new research presented at Heart Failure 2017—4th World Congress on Acute Heart Failure suggests.

Researchers analyzed data on more than 1,300,000 people from nine previous studies, and concluded that those with type A, type B, or type AB blood were 9 percent more likely to have a cardiovascular event—like a heart attack—than those with type O blood.

The exact mechanism behind the increased heart risk isn’t exactly clear. But one possibility may be because people with non type-O blood have greater concentrations of a blood clotting protein called von Willebrand factor, which can make the development of a blockage that causes a heart attack more likely, the researchers say in a press release. (That also may be why guys with non type-O blood are more likely to develop erectile dysfunction, too.)

People with non-O blood also tend to have higher cholesterol and higher levels of inflammation.

More research is needed to clarify the links between blood type and heart risks—and to look at each blood type separately—but the researchers believe that blood type may eventually play a role in risk assessment for heart disease, along with traditional factors like cholesterol, age, and blood pressure.

IL1B and VWF Variants Are Associated With Fibrinolytic Early Recanalization in Patients With Ischemic Stroke

At least they are trying to find out why tPA doesn't work.
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/43/10/2659.abstract

Abstract

Background and Purpose—There is a great interindividual variability among patients with acute ischemic stroke regarding the response to intravenous tissue-type plasminogen activator treatment. The aim of this study was to identify genetic variants associated with recanalization, and thus treatment efficacy, after tissue-type plasminogen activator administration.

Methods—A total of 140 single nucleotide polymorphisms from 97 candidate genes were successfully genotyped by SNPlex in 2 cohorts, accounting for 497 prospectively recruited tissue-type plasminogen activator-treated patients, of whom 33% recanalized during tissue-type plasminogen activator infusion. Functional studies were then performed, including assessment of interleukin 1B mRNA levels and von Willebrand factor, FIII, FVII, FVIII, and FX protein activity.

Results—After replication, the following single nucleotide polymorphisms were associated with early recanalization: rs1143627 in IL1B gene (CC: 53.1% of recanalization, A-carriers: 32.7%; P=0.022; replication cohort: P=0.046), rs16944 in IL1B gene (AA: 50% of recanalization, G-carriers: 32%; P=0.038; replication cohort: P=0.049), and rs1063856 in the vWF gene (GG: 53.8% of recanalization, A-carriers: 31.5%; P=0.006; replication cohort: P=0.046). The functional studies revealed an association between the rs1063856 single nucleotide polymorphisms in vWF and FVIII activity (AA: 115.93%, AG: 156.07%, GG: 83.42%; P=0.005).

Conclusions—Three single nucleotide polymorphisms were associated with tissue-type plasminogen activator efficacy in the Spanish population, and their mechanism of action might be associated with the activity of coagulation factors.