Tranquil science...learn more, explore more, grow more....: Do we all have same blood group??

Yesterday my bestie met a severe accident and gone through a lot of bloodshed. When I reached to see him in the hospital, doc told me that my friend was losing blood faster than it could be transfused and so he needs more volume of blood. Without wasting a moment i volunteered, but unfortunately doc told me that I’m not the correct match for blood transfusion.

I couldn’t understand why?? Why I was unable to help my friend?? How I can be a mismatch to my bestie??
Disappointingly, I ask him the reason and all he mentioned was about blood typing and the blood system.

So, today we’re going to talk about our blood system, the ABO blood system & blood typing. Blood typing is a method to tell what type of blood you have and is done so you can safely donate and receive your blood.

Now, the question is don’t we all have same blood groups?? Answer is NO; Due to the presence of different types of oxygen carrying proteins, called antigens in RBCs, everyone does not have same blood type.

There are two types of antigens A & B and four probable blood types on the basis of their presence.

As if we’ve antigen A, our blood gp is A; if have antigen B, blood would be Type b. but besides these two types there are few people who don’t have any antigen in their RBCs (zero antigen blood) and show o type blood and others who have both the a & b antigens in their RBCs, show AB type blood group.

So there are 4 types of blood – A, B, AB & O.

So, if particularly you’ve type a blood, it means there is antigen a present in your body and you’ll recognize only a blood gp but if in case you get transfused with another type of blood , your body will generate antibodies to fight against the foreign antigens of transfusing blood and so, reject that mismatch blood gp. Similar is with Type B blood. This is called blood typing.

In case of AB blood type, person can’t donate blood to any other blood type but can receive blood from any of the blood type groups (A, B, AB & O.). So, AB blood gp is the UNIVERSAL RECIPIENT.

And Type O persons are UNIVERSAL DONORS as they do not have any antigens in their blood composition and so are compatible match to any of the blood groups.