Hello, I'm Doctor Alexandre Amato, vascular surgeon at Instituto Amato, and today I'm going to talk about blood types and their correlation with diseases, cardiovascular diseases. Blood type has everything to do with vascular surgery, after all, vascular surgery takes care of circulation and what passes through circulation, through our arteries and veins, is blood. And blood type, then, influences some cardiovascular diseases and that's what we're going to talk about here today.
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A and B are antigens that live on the surface of red blood cells, these antigens are produced by genetics, so you will inherit this from your father, your mother and you will carry this for the rest of your life, you cannot change Your blood type is something that you were born with and will have the same blood type throughout your life. And type O is the one that does not have any antigen on the surface of the cell, so, what we have in the end, we have type A, the blood that has antigen A on the surface, there is type B that has the B antigen and there are types A and B that have the A antigen and the B antigen and there is the one that does not have any antigen on this surface and then it will be called group O. The antigens end up triggering some reaction in our body if you are not prepared for it.
So what does it mean? If you don't have the A antigen and you receive type A blood in a transfusion, your body will react to it like a foreign body and it can cause hemolysis, the destruction of cells, thrombosis and can have a lot of complications. So, blood groups are extremely important when donating blood, when receiving donor blood, then we have type A and B, that is, those who have type A and B are the people who can receive any type of blood A , B or O, because they are already prepared for these two types of antigen, which is antigen A and antigen B.
Now, those people who are in group O, have no antigen at all, they are not prepared to receive blood neither type A, nor type B or type A and B, so we have to be very careful. Those who carry types A and B are universal recipients and can receive blood from anyone. And group O are those who are universal donors, so they are people whose blood can be used by anyone, those who have type A and those who have type B as well.
Now, when we are talking about whether the blood is A positive or A negative, this is more or less after the blood group, then it has nothing to do with this ABO classification, it has to do with the RESUS classification, it is another type of antigen , can also trigger these immune reactions. I explained type A and type B a lot, I didn't talk about the RESUS classification, but it is also relevant. So, what's interesting is that these blood types, they are related to an increase in some diseases.
If you know this, you can take precautions, you can know where you have to focus your life to avoid some bigger problems. So, group A, that is, type A blood type, is related to cardiovascular diseases, probably because this antigen is linked to an increased risk of thrombosis. This increase is tiny, not very large, but it is enough to statistically increase, when we evaluate this risk in large populations.
This blood type is very rare. Likewise, group O, which does not have the antigen, is related to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease. And when we are talking about cardiovascular disease, there are strokes, strokes, acute myocardial infarction, thrombosis, we can even talk about thrombophilia.
Thrombophilia, I have a whole video talking about it, it's that increased risk of thrombosis. These are people who carry a disease in their blood and who can have this significant increase. There are several genetic diseases, including Leiden factor 5 and others, but we can talk about population groups that have an increased risk, not due to a disease, but a genetic characteristic.
And when we talk about characteristics that can increase the risk of thrombophilia, consequently of thrombosis, even biological sex, gender, can have an influence. So women have a slightly higher risk of having thrombosis than men. This risk is tiny, when we only use biological sex as an indicator, but there is this difference.
The statistics are that while thrombosis occurs in 93 women out of every 100,000 women, it will occur in men in every 85 men out of 100,000 men. So there is this small difference, we are talking about small numbers, I am not talking about a disease in which the risk significantly increases, but when we look at the blood group it also has this influence. There is a study from 2005 that shows that blood groups other than O have a 2.
2-fold increase in the risk of thrombosis. We are talking about a very small risk, when it increases by 2. 2 times it may not be considered that significant.
Now when we get thrombophilia, this risk increases by 2. 8 times. And then when we associate the non-O blood group, that is, group A, B or A and B associated with thrombophilia, this risk increases to more than 7 times.
Interestingly , group O are people who also have a lower risk of contracting malaria. The blood group with type AB, with both antigens at the same time, has a slightly higher risk of developing Alzheimer's later in life. And type B group is associated with a small increase in the risk of pancreatic cancer.
When we are talking about these blood groups, what is related to my specialty, with cardiovascular disease, with circulation, is specifically group A. Now what we can talk about is that throughout the world, positive O is the most common, followed by positive A and then positive B. So, what is your blood group?
You know? This is very important if you have a trauma, you need to receive blood, it is important to know the ABO group you belong to. And it is very important for me to say here that if you have an increased risk, it does not mean that you will have the disease, but rather that you must be aware, you must have healthy lifestyle habits, you must take precautions, you must visit your doctor regularly.
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