What’s Your Blood Type?
Blood types are mysterious things — no one knows for sure why we have different groups, for instance.
Yet science is revealing how having a particular blood type can play a crucial hidden role in many aspects of health, from our chances of suffering sex and fertility problems, to whether we develop Alzheimer’s, lethal blood clots or even cancer.
The difference between blood groups is down to a combination of sugars and proteins that coat red blood cells.
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Based on this, we can all be classified into one of four main groups: A, B, AB and O. Around 44 per cent of Britons are type O, 42 per cent are type A, 10 percent type B and 4 per cent AB.
A study published last week suggests that men with type O are four times less likely to experience impotence than men with blood types A, B or AB. According to the research, by Ordu University in Turkey and published in the journal Archives of Italian Urology and Andrology, blood type may be as important a risk factor for impotence as smoking, being overweight, and high blood pressure.
Although the exact reason is unclear, scientists said the penis has one of the highest amounts of veins in the body, and that something in blood type A may damage the lining of these veins, causing erectile dysfunction.
Fewer than half of English adults know their blood type, according to the NHS Blood and Transplant service, and many of us only find it out when we give blood.
Yet knowing our group may help us protect our own health. For although it is not clear why these groups emerged, it is known some blood types offer defense against different diseases.
For example, studies by the University of Toronto in 2014 indicate that people with type O are better protected against severe malaria than other blood types.
This seems to be because human immune cells are better able to recognize infected type-O blood cells than other types, and are more likely to target them.
But immunity seems to be only part of the story. Blood type also affects female fertility, and type A seems to be significantly better than type O. Studies have consistently found that women with type-O blood exhaust their body’s store of eggs earlier in life.
A 2011 Yale University study of more than 560 women in their mid-30s having fertility treatment found those with type O were twice as likely to have a lower egg count and poorer egg quality than those with group A. Researchers said this meant that they were less likely to become pregnant.
Separate research suggests that the hereditary genes which determine type O blood may also be responsible for this premature egg depletion.
There is some good fertility news for women with type O blood, however. Last year an Italian study, in the journal Blood Transfusions, found that they have a lower risk of pre-eclampsia — high blood pressure in pregnancy, which can be dangerous for mother and baby — than women with other blood groups.
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