'Gwada negative': French scientists find new blood type in woman | Hacker News Reader

'Gwada negative': French scientists find new blood type in woman

lemonde.fr

184 pointsspidersouris68 comments

The OP is low on details. There is more in this article (in french): https://www.lindependant.fr/2025/06/21/il-ny-a-quelle-qui-es...

Apparently the ISBT have added this to their list: https://www.isbtweb.org/isbt-working-parties/rcibgt.html (the page still says 47 but the data tables have it added)

Neither article talks about whether this is a minor or a major antigen.

Blood for transfusion needs to be crossmatched against antigen types of the recipient. Many patients will tolerate several transfusions of a minor mismatched antigen before developing a sensitivity. Major antigens are what cause significant reactions that can be life-threatening.

Minor antigens come into play when crossmatching for infants and premies, but this is way beyond my scope.

With a single known case of somebody producing antibodies against the antigen, it might be a bit hard to say how many transfusions it typically takes to develop a sensitivity.

I recently had major surgery and got two units of blood in during the operation and two more post-op. Post-op before I got the blood, they typed my blood again, and a nurse stayed in the room while I got the blood and I wondered why. This comment makes it clear.

Close observation for 15 minutes is typical for any blood transfusion. You do a set of pre-transfusion vitals, vitals when the blood hits the vein, vitals every 5 minutes until 15 minutes is up, vitals every 15 minutes until the blood is done. Ask any nurse why they hate running blood.

Depending on the severity of the reaction, blood will either be stopped or the patient will be loaded up with Benadryl and Tylenol with the blood running at a slower rate.

That's interesting; I didn't know that to realize it was missing.

> Minor antigens come into play when crossmatching for infants

I’m reminded of that American high schooler in Uganda running an orphanage and ran into this exact issue when doing a transfusion on a malnourished infant. [1]

She was skilled enough to perform a transfusion and knowledgeable enough to test for a ABO+/- match but not so knowledgeable as to be sensitive to this issue with disastrous results.

On the other hand her clinics metrics were on par or slightly above the local hospitals so it’s not clear to me they would have faired better getting care elsewhere there.

[1] https://stories.showmax.com/za/hbos-docuseries-savior-comple...

I don't know anything about the case in Uganda, but transfusion reactions can happen to anyone, even in the United States.

We don't actually express antibodies to antigens until we're exposed to them, so crossmatching won't detect a minor antigen mismatch until the first transfusion containing the antigen is administered.

That first time causes a delayed hemolytic transfusion reaction, which is generally milder than the kind of reaction crossmatching will prevent, but can be serious or even fatal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_hemolytic_transfusion_...

Type O Negative here, they all kill me so luckily I don't have to guess!

Does the concept of O -ve as a universal donor type apply at all outside of the ABO group, and am I understanding correctly from your comment that even within the APO group O -ve compatibility would still be subject to this antigen matching?

Don't we have synthetic blood, at least capable of transporting oxygen ?

There's not really a synthetic oxygen-carrying blood substitute that's commonly used. Turns out it's actually pretty hard to get right. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_substitute has some info on different approaches and products that were/are sometimes used, but the short story is: not really.

@dang should change the OP, entrevue is really a poor website (think tmz)

TMZ is a very respectable publication if you compare it to Entrevue...

You'll need to email the mods.

FYI, the only English article at the time of posting was Entrevue's, which is why it was initially chosen. But indeed, Le Monde's article is much better.

Ok, we've changed the URL from https://entrevue.fr/en/un-groupe-sanguin-inedit-decouvert-en... to a different article (in English). Thanks!

My clearly incorrect understanding was that there are ~8 blood types. So reading that there are 48 is shocking.

There are 48 blood type systems, of which ABO (giving A, B, AB, and O) and Rh (+/-) can be combined to form the 8 common types.

There are effectively millions of types because all the systems combined combinatorially, but most antigens beyond ABO and Rh don't cause that much of an issue, so in emergency cases, they just go with them.

Why are A and B considered to belong to the same "system"? They combine with each other combinatorially in exactly the same way that rhesus factor combines with them, and presumably the same way that all other systems combine with all other systems.

Hold my beer; I'm gonna middlebrow this! My best guess (dimly remembered from drawing blood for testing in my lab) is that these "groups" (systems?) all live at the same place on the chromosomes that do/n't express them — they're alleles.

Blood type systems are defined by the single allele that encodes the antigens (as you point out, sometimes multiple antigens per allele). This table shows all of the different blood type systems, https://www.isbtweb.org/resource/tableofbloodgroupsystems.ht..., and the chromosomal location of the respective allele.

ABO all involve the same gene locus and the same protein just different glycans that get added. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ABO_(gene)

A few years ago, I made a comment in a similar topic asking for more details, and I got a very good reply. Hat tip to tait:

> It's complicated.

> There are more than 35 red blood cell groups (see https://www.science.org.au/curious/people-medicine/blood-typ... for a nice writeup). For each of those blood groups, there is more than one possible configuration of some protein or carbohydrate (something like more than one possible genetic sequence leading to more than one kind of molecule on the surface of the RBCs).

> And, even with ABO, there can be infrequent variations that make things more complicated (see https://professionaleducation.blood.ca/en/transfusion/best-p... for more).

> For the other blood groups, I think every case the groups were identified because a patient somewhere made an antibody, causing either a transfusion reaction (if not tested ahead of time) or, more likely, a positive (incompatible) reaction on in compatibility testing.

> [...]

It's worth reading the full original comment because it has more interesting details https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33507052

Is that what’s going on with organ matching?

Abo is a major part of organ matching. Abo has to be considered for any organ transplant. Every organ differs but HLA antigens is a different, more complex set of antigens that needs to be matched to some degree as well. Abo is usually a simple test, so hla antigen matching is most of what "organ matching" labs spend their time on. I work in this field.

Yes, but even more complicated.

The other thing people should have more awareness of is that plasma and blood have opposite compatibilities; a universal plasma donor will have blood only compatible to their blood type and vice versa.

Which makes the hollywood trope of ‘i’m a universal donor’ really silly. Universal donor of what? And then they pump the blood and plasma straight into the other person pretty much guaranteeing problems since either the blood or plasma will be incompatible. The only reason blood donation works is due to machines that separate the blood and plasma.

When people are directly piped to each other in movies, I often wonder if there is some negotiation protocol like PD that ensures that the donor continues to charge the recipient, even when their capacities both reach equilibrium.

> The discovery of new blood types isn't limited to transfusion emergencies. It also sheds light on certain previously unexplained pathologies. The specialist discusses the recent case of three siblings who had suffered from mysterious rheumatological disorders since adolescence. It was only after identifying their rare blood type that doctors were able to establish a probable link with their symptoms.

How does that work? Were all three siblings regularly receiving donated blood? The article doesn't expand on this at all.

I read it to mean that the rheumatological symptoms they had were the result of their unusual blood type. Hard to say without more info, but something about that particular blood type could be linked to an inflammatory disorder.

This is one of those things that doesnt matter most of the time but when it matters it really matters.

It’s cool to see these discoveries, but as a patient. It’s probably a nightmare to be unique in this aspect.

If American, think higher costs of care. If involved in car accident or other traumatic injury outside of normal area, good luck getting your blood transfused. Might get lucky with substitute. Surgery preparation also more complicated.

Maybe you have competent medical staff that recognize it. Maybe a few hematologists in the world familiar with your blood and history. Maybe a few neurons fire off in the back of an aging emergency physician that recalls this in a case study he/she read about in medical school/residency.

Manga lore fan wikis about to go nuts...

Why?

Japanese culture looks at blood type as indicative of personality, like horoscopes.

I wonder why they named it PIGZ

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