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Concept
ABO blood group system
Summary
The ABO blood group system is used to denote the presence of one, both, or neither of the A and B antigens on erythrocytes. For human blood transfusions, it is the most important of the 44 different blood type (or group) classification systems currently recognized by the International Society of Blood Transfusions (ISBT) as of
December 2022. A mismatch (very rare in modern medicine) in this, or any other serotype, can cause a potentially fatal adverse reaction after a transfusion, or an unwanted immune response to an organ transplant. The associated anti-A and anti-B antibodies are usually IgM antibodies, produced in the first years of life by sensitization to environmental substances such as food, bacteria, and viruses.
The ABO blood types were discovered by Karl Landsteiner in 1901; he received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1930 for this discovery. ABO blood types are also present in other primates such as apes and Old World monkeys.
The ABO blood types were first discovered by an Austrian physician, Karl Landsteiner, working at the Pathological-Anatomical Institute of the University of Vienna (now Medical University of Vienna). In 1900, he found that red blood cells would clump together (agglutinate) when mixed in test tubes with sera from different persons, and that some human blood also agglutinated with animal blood. He wrote a two-sentence footnote:
The serum of healthy human beings not only agglutinates animal red cells, but also often those of human origin, from other individuals. It remains to be seen whether this appearance is related to inborn differences between individuals or it is the result of some damage of bacterial kind.
This was the first evidence that blood variations exist in humans – it was believed that all humans have similar blood. The next year, in 1901, he made a definitive observation that blood serum of an individual would agglutinate with only those of certain individuals. Based on this he classified human blood into three groups, namely group A, group B, and group C.
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