Scientists Identify New Blood Group After 50 Year Mystery
4th January 2025
When a pregnant woman had her blood sampled back in 1972, doctors discovered it was mysteriously missing a surface molecule found on all other known red blood cells at the time.
After 50 years, this strange molecular absence finally led to researchers from the UK and Israel describing a new blood group system in humans. In September, the team published their paper on the discovery.
“It represents a huge achievement, and the culmination of a long team effort, to finally establish this new blood group system and be able to offer the best care to rare, but important, patients,” UK National Health Service hematologist Louise Tilley said, after nearly 20 years of personally researching this bloody quirk.
While we’re all more familiar with the ABO blood group system and the rhesus factor (that’s the plus or minus part), humans actually have many different blood group systems based on the wide variety of cell-surface proteins and sugars that coat our blood cells.
Our bodies use these antigen molecules, amongst their other purposes, as identification markers to separate ‘self’ from potentially harmful not-selves.