In the 10th case in the world and first in India, a 65-year-old man in Gujarat has been found to have a rare blood group beyond the usual four.
The rare blood group came to the fore when the doctors preparing for heart surgery on the man could not find the match for his blood type and the surgery was postponed. Initially, the doctors in Rajkot couldn’t find a blood match and he was referred to Ahmedabad. However, doctors at Ahmedabad too couldn’t find a match. Even after testing his daughter and son when the match was not found, the sample was sent to a lab in New York.
After a year, the researchers could conclude that the blood group was AB+ blood group with EMM ‘negative’ frequency. It is a unique blood type beyond the commonly known blood types of ‘A’, ‘B’, ‘O’ or ‘AB’. EMM antigens are antibodies that develop naturally in the body. This patient did not have EMM in his blood,
So far, only nine persons in the world have been detected with EMM negative frequency blood type. Our man from Gujarat is added to the list as the 10th person in the whole world to have this blood type. Experts say that there are four types of blood groups in general. These consist of 42 types of systems, such as A, B, O, Rh and Duffy. There are also 375 types of antigens with high EMM frequency.
