Ael – The Rarest Of Blood Groups

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Shalby Multispecialty Hospitals in Ahmedabad disclosed that it had identified the extremely rare ‘Ael’ group in one of its voluntary blood donors, who till now was mistakenly donating blood under the belief that his group was O negative.

According to pathologists, there are barely 40 to 50 people in the world with Ael blood group, most of whom are in South-East Asia.
Ael has the least amount of A antigen among A subgroups and can only be detected through special tests.
A ten times donor, Jain’s true blood group had not been identified till now — but surfaced this time because Shalby Hospitals used a more advanced technique to test the sample.
Nishita Shukla, Group COO, Shalby Multispecialty Hospitals, said, “We have very high-end technology to find out accurate and precise blood groups. For blood tests, we use the more accurate gel technology.”

Gel Technology

Gel technology is widely used for blood typing in human medicine. It has a number of advantages over routine tube testing, including standardization, stability, smaller sample volume, ease of performance and analysis, and speed.
The aim of this study was to evaluate feline blood typing using the gel column technique.

What is Blood?

Blood is a constantly circulating fluid providing the body with nutrition, oxygen, and waste removal. Blood is mostly liquid, with numerous cells and proteins suspended in it, making blood “thicker” than pure water.
The blood constitutes 7% of the total weight of the human’s body.
Its pH value is nearly 7.4, so it is considered base in nature.
There is an average of 5-6 litres of blood in the human body.

Functions of Blood

To control the temperature of the body and to protect the body from diseases.
Transportation of oxygen, Carbon dioxide, digested food, conduction of hormones etc.
To help in establishing coordination among different parts.

What is Blood Group?

The blood group refers to different types of blood in humans, which are determined by the presence or absence of different types of antigens on the surface of the red blood cells.
Due to the presence of different antigens and antibodies in the blood, it is important to determine the blood group prior to blood transfusion.
The determination of the blood group is done under two major criteria.
They are ABO blood group system and RH blood group system.
Therefore, the blood group of a human is represented as a combination of above two blood groups.

What’s the rarest blood type?

It’s hard to say which blood type is the rarest in the world because they’re linked to genetics. That means the prevalence of certain blood types varies widely in different parts of the world.
But in the United States, AB-negative is considered the rarest blood type, and O-positive is the most common.
In India, the most common blood type is B-positive, while in Denmark, it’s A-positive.

Bombay Blood Group

The Bombay blood group, also called hh, is deficient in expressing antigen H, meaning the RBC has no antigen H.
For instance, in the AB blood group, both antigens A and B are found. A will have A antigens; B will have B antigens. In hh, there are no A or B antigens.
Globally, the hh blood type has an incidence of one in four million. It has a higher incidence in South Asia; in India, one in 7,600 to 10,000 are born with this type.
To test for hh blood, an Antigen H blood test is required. Often the hh blood group is confused with the O group. The difference is that the O group has Antigen H, while the hh group does not.

Rhnull or “golden blood”

Rhnull is a rare blood type that doesn’t contain any Rh-antigens in red blood cells. Also nicknamed “golden blood” due to its extreme rarity, only 1 out of every 6 million are thought to have this phenotype.
People with Rhnull blood phenotypes may also be at risk of developing chronic hemolytic anemia, which causes your body to destroy immature red blood cells.

Question:
Which of the following blood cells play an important role in blood clotting?
(a) Thrombocytes
(b) Neutrophils
(c) Leucocytes
(d) Erythrocytes