An agnostic study of associations between ABO and RhD blood group and phenome-wide disease risk
- Karolinska Institutet, Sweden
- Lund University, Sweden
Abstract
Background There are multiple known associations between the ABO and RhD blood groups and disease. No systematic population-based studies elucidating associations between a large number of disease categories and blood group have been conducted.
Methods Using SCANDAT3-S, a comprehensive nationwide blood donation-transfusion database, we modelled outcomes for 1,217 disease categories including 70 million person-years of follow-up, accruing from 5.1 million individuals.
Results We discovered 49 and 1 associations between a disease and ABO and RhD blood group, respectively, after adjustment for multiple testing. We identified new associations such as kidney stones and blood group B as compared to O. We also expanded previous knowledge on other associations such as pregnancy-induced hypertension and blood group A and AB as compared to O and RhD positive as compared to negative.
Conclusion Our findings generate strong further support for previously known associations, but also indicate new interesting relations.
Funding Swedish Research Council.
Data availability
The patient level data used to construct the analyses cannot be made publicly available because of Swedish laws guarding the personal integrity of its citizens. Aggregate level data, which includes all the necessary information to recreate all the results can be requested from the authors, but requires IRB approval. This data includes subject blood group, age, sex, and calendar period, together with the corresponding number of person-years and the number of each type of event. IRB approval sought at the Swedish Ethical Review Authority (https://etikprovningsmyndigheten.se).
Article and author information
Author details
Funding
Swedish Research Council (2017-01954)
- Gustaf Edgren
Region Stockholm clinical research appointment
- Torsten Dahlén
- Jingcheng Zhao
- Gustaf Edgren
The funders had no role in study design, data collection, interpretation, or the decision to submit the work for publication.
Ethics
Human subjects: The study has been approved by regional Stockholm County Board of Ethics Committee (ref nr: 2018/167-31). In Swedish register-based research informed consent, when involving a large number of individuals, does not need to be obtained.
Copyright
© 2021, Dahlén et al.
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License permitting unrestricted use and redistribution provided that the original author and source are credited.
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An agnostic study of associations between ABO and RhD blood group and phenome-wide disease risk
eLife 10:e65658.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.65658
