Re: Eat for your blood type?

From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Thu Mar 27 2003 - 12:32:55 MST

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    Charles Hixson:
    >Personal blood banks aren't yet practical, except right before
    >surgery. Blood can only be preserved live for a couple of weeks (at
    >most). After that it has to be rendered down for plasma and other
    >fractions. But you might look into joining the Rare Blood Club (I
    >think that's its name). This is an organization of people with rare
    >blood types who donate to help others with rare blood types. Now you
    >didn't say ABnegative, but I think that it also includes AB. Still,
    >check it out.

    I saw these numbers (didn't save the web page tho)
    AB- is 0.7 % population
    AB+ is 3.4 % (me) I don't know if this qualifies as 'rare'.

    As Spike mentioned: My AB type is a 'Universal Recipient', but I
    think that must be for red blood cells, not necessarily for whole
    blood, if I'm reading the next chart correctly:

    http://www.bloodbook.com/compat.html

    Even though the reasons for banking my blood don't appear as strong
    now (I didn't know that the storage for live blood had that short of
    a lifetime), the web pages I read make a good argument that I should
    be donating blood (the Italian Red Cross would likely be the people
    I would work through)

    http://www.bloodbook.com/rare-chart.html

    ----
    An excerpt:
    "As a side note for these relatively few people having rare Blood,
    there exists several great tools, the American Rare Donor Program
    (ARDP), among others. The American Red Cross, in collaboration with
    the American Association of Blood Banks (AABB), maintains this rare
    donor database as part of the ARDP program. This organization
    identifies donors who have rare Blood and these rare Blood types and
    ask them to enlist in a registry. When a need for their special
    Blood type arises, they can call upon another donor, also on the
    list, to give. The Red Cross freezes these rare units of red cells
    to assure their availability as needed.
    By the way, if you are ever asked to join this registry, "yes" is a
    good response. Someone, somewhere, may need what you, and only you,
    may be able to give. Rare Blood may be sent anywhere in the world to
    literally save a life. Rare Blood requests are received in every
    Blood center every day.
    It is very important that everyone know if they have a special Blood
    type. Some patients with rare Blood types need to be transfused with
    exactly the same rare type as their own. We suggest Blood storage in
    every case of rare Blood. The Frozen Autologous Blood Reserve
    Service freezes Blood that patients with rare Blood types donate for
    their own surgeries.
    It is also very important to know the race or ethnic background of a
    Blood donor or candidate for a Blood transfusion. The Blood center
    physician, or Blood bank technician must always be alert for special
    Blood types. Your Blood type is inherited just like the color of
    your eyes and hair. Many Blood types, therefore, are found only in
    specific racial and ethnic groups. For example listed here is a very
    few of the most common Blood types in the most often seen rare
    ethnic categories:"
    (see web page for the rest)
    ----
    The last paragraph leads to something interesting- there is a
    geographical and racial distribution of blood types, which would be
    an interesting data set to analyze, however, the authors state that
    there is not enough reliability to determine such things as
    population migration patterns. My blood type is most common in
    Asians (while my background is 1/2 Latvian, then 1/4 Greek and German!).
    ----
    http://www.bloodbook.com/world-abo.html
    Excerpt
    "There are racial and ethnic differences in Blood type and
    composition. The ABO Blood group system was discovered in 1901 and
    since it is of major importance in medicine, samples have been
    diligently collected from the most remote of people groups for a
    century. Of no other human characteristic is so much data available.
    Most populations have migrated and mixed. Unfortunately the
    reliability of the Blood data for assessing relationships between
    population groups is very limited. This is mostly due to the lack of
    availability of this important data. As the chart reveals, the
    frequency and purity of the four main ABO Blood groups varies in
    populations throughout the world. A great variation may even occur
    in different groups within a given country; even a small country, as
    one ethnic group mixes, or not, with another.
    As an example, the early European races are characterized by a very
    low type B frequency, and a relatively high type A frequency while
    the Asiatic races are characterized by a high frequency of types A
    and B. The following chart does not consider Rh factor and may vary
    in specific regions. It is also different for some very particular
    racial or ethnic groups. We have highlighted interesting pure
    anomalies.
    The frequency with which Blood types are observed is determined by
    the frequency with which the three alleles of the ABO gene are found
    in different parts of the world. Variation in this allele frequency
    of the ABO gene reflects the social tendency of populations to marry
    and reproduce within their national, regional, or ethnic group. As
    people throughout the world intermingle to a greater degree, the
    distribution of the different Blood types will continue to become
    more uniform. Red cell antigens are the phenotypical expression of
    our inherited genes. One of the most common questions that we get is
    about the the ethnic and racial distribution of human Blood groups.
    In response, following here is our collection of basic ABO Blood
    group data, sorted by people groups."
    -----
    John Grigg:
    >P.S. I would beg everyone out there who rides a bicycle or a motorcycle
    >to always wear their helmet.
    Always. That's why I call it my brain bucket.
    [See my brain bucket taking a break here, while I was out walking
    around and snapping  pictures: :-)
    http://www.amara.com/port/parkedbike@Sines_50.jpg]
    -- 
    ********************************************************************
    Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara@amara.com
    Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
    Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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    "A million here, a million there, sooner or later it is real money."
        --  U.S. Senator Dirksen
    


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