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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
I worked with some Koreans and asking them about Fan Death is something they’ll laugh about like it’s silly but then say “but for real, you should open the door if you run your fan, just in case”. I’d imagine they feel similarly about blood types. People believe it the way they believe astrology.
That's where correlations of random events and placebo end and where discovery begins.
There are 'gods' that are 'better' than others. Even if the principle of what you/people believe goes against what you find scientifically relevent, or factual, or sensible. There still is something to be said about a group of people following a strange set of rules that could be demonstrably better than other sets of rules and beliefs. May it be enviromental, genetic, placebo or a tiny edge over what gives life meaning. We ended up with the gods we have today, not by coincidence, but because all the other ones failed their followers.
I don’t think that’s valid. Gods usually come with a set of values or a specific worldview, and these are inherently subjective. You can’t really rank them as "better" or "worse" in any meaningful way.
Let’s take an example: imagine I believe in a paperclip-god. The core value here is producing as many paperclips as possible, and I’d argue that anything that doesn’t serve this goal is inferior. Under this belief system, it might be okay to enslave or even kill humans if it leads to more paperclips. I could use logic and even scientific reasoning to defend this idea as a "better" system for maximizing paperclip production.
Now, you might object and say that humans are more valuable than paperclips, but we'll never agree. The value of the goal itself, whether it’s maximizing paperclips or valuing human life, is subjective. There’s no objective reason why one goal is inherently superior to the other.
Religions compete by "virality", like viruses they evolve towards encouraging reproduction.
Even if you measure "better" as "more viral" - it's not "gods" who are better - it's cultural memes (for example there's 1000 versions of christianity believing in the same gods with vastly different cultures and virality outcomes).
I'd guess there is a significant language barrier, for lack of better words, on the meaning of 'god' and 'virtue'(which might have been more descriptive, but I'm not willing to edit my comment for the clarity that it lacks out of respect for the other posters/readers)
Its true that many things co-evolved with us, like viruses and blood types(yes, we're somewhat on topic again) and even though we share many similar characteristics, like blood type, mayor, minor. Its also true that discovery of new things doesn't always invalidate the old way of thinking. Usuallyit just adds to what has already been existing. Like how multicellular life is a true breeding ground for single celled organism.
Similarly, the ABO+- blood type system was good enough to not kill patients, which is quite the improvement. Though only a fool would treat that system as gospel and align personalities with it. Now we're classifying the minor types and we're getting closer to rediscovering the uniqueness of everyones blood just as everyones beliefs,god or no god, is unique if you are willing to look.
I know that HN is not very appreciative of religion or god. I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are. I definitely wouldn't want our economy to become a paperclip maximiser but any perceived missteps should be dissected with a good blogpost on how we got here in the first place.
> I know that HN is not very appreciative of religion or god.
> I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are
I am not sure what the relation is between these sentences.
Yeah, cause while blood type is like horoscopes which absolutely no meaningful information, silly personality quizzes at least tell you back what you told them, so some kind of correlation exists, even if the categorization and implications are basically spurious.
I'm not sure they're really "into" mbti. Most of the people I know who know about mbti talk about their result ironically. About as seriously as talking about their star sign or which planet is in retrograde. I've yet to see anyone actually into it.
I remember reading something about peoples personalities being vaguely related to their names which makes even less sense. Unless peoples names subtlety influence their behavior. Perhaps if these blood type ideas are so prevalent in Korea and everyone from a very young age is aware of their blood type they might have a self fulfilling prophecy.
The names have a decent basic explanation. Names are stereotyped, exist on popular culture and have a bit of language influence (think bouba/kiki). Since some of the personality is inherited, parents' name preference will end up aligning slightly with the whole population which will end up aligning with the kids' behaviours.
Okay but what are the odds of someone named “Doug Bowser” becoming president of Nintendo of America without nominative determinism having at least a grain of truth.
Yes it's defined for fictional characters, but I have the feeling it's more due to their obsession of details. I've never been asked my blood type there in years, whereas some Taiwanese girls asked me the question.
Well, it's definitely true to some extent, since there will 100% be some genes that contribute in some way to a person's personality that are colocated with genes responsible for blood type.
FWIW, in trying to map normal blood types like O- or AB+ to the 47 (now 48 or 49) blood group systems, apparently that is only basically a value on the type 001 (ABO Group System) and type 004 (Rh group system). People could still have antigens that further bifurcate in the other 45+ blood group systems.
So our ABO+/- system already doesn't have information on the other 45+ systems, and this new antigen wouldn't change that high level classification.
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.
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.
> 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_...
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.
Type O Negative here, they all kill me so luckily I don't have to guess!
That's interesting; I didn't know that to realize it was missing.
Ok, we've changed the URL from https://entrevue.fr/en/un-groupe-sanguin-inedit-decouvert-en... to a different article (in English). Thanks!
@dang should change the OP, entrevue is really a poor website (think tmz)
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.
TMZ is a very respectable publication if you compare it to Entrevue...
You'll need to email the mods.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
This is one of those things that doesnt matter most of the time but when it matters it really matters.
Manga lore fan wikis about to go nuts...
Why?
Japanese culture looks at blood type as indicative of personality, like horoscopes.
> 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.
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.
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I worked with some Koreans and asking them about Fan Death is something they’ll laugh about like it’s silly but then say “but for real, you should open the door if you run your fan, just in case”. I’d imagine they feel similarly about blood types. People believe it the way they believe astrology.
Still more reasonable than basing your entire personality on the month you were born.
Sounds like someone born on the galaxy outward part of the spiral orbit would say.
PS: I prefer pre debunked random universal mysticism to pseudo scientific racism. Some nonsense is the more preferable nonsense.
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That's where correlations of random events and placebo end and where discovery begins.
There are 'gods' that are 'better' than others. Even if the principle of what you/people believe goes against what you find scientifically relevent, or factual, or sensible. There still is something to be said about a group of people following a strange set of rules that could be demonstrably better than other sets of rules and beliefs. May it be enviromental, genetic, placebo or a tiny edge over what gives life meaning. We ended up with the gods we have today, not by coincidence, but because all the other ones failed their followers.
> There are 'gods' that are 'better' than others
I don’t think that’s valid. Gods usually come with a set of values or a specific worldview, and these are inherently subjective. You can’t really rank them as "better" or "worse" in any meaningful way.
Let’s take an example: imagine I believe in a paperclip-god. The core value here is producing as many paperclips as possible, and I’d argue that anything that doesn’t serve this goal is inferior. Under this belief system, it might be okay to enslave or even kill humans if it leads to more paperclips. I could use logic and even scientific reasoning to defend this idea as a "better" system for maximizing paperclip production.
Now, you might object and say that humans are more valuable than paperclips, but we'll never agree. The value of the goal itself, whether it’s maximizing paperclips or valuing human life, is subjective. There’s no objective reason why one goal is inherently superior to the other.
I wonder if this was inspired by Universal Paperclips (https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html)
There is some common inspiration https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instrumental_convergence#Paper...
Religions compete by "virality", like viruses they evolve towards encouraging reproduction.
Even if you measure "better" as "more viral" - it's not "gods" who are better - it's cultural memes (for example there's 1000 versions of christianity believing in the same gods with vastly different cultures and virality outcomes).
I'd guess there is a significant language barrier, for lack of better words, on the meaning of 'god' and 'virtue'(which might have been more descriptive, but I'm not willing to edit my comment for the clarity that it lacks out of respect for the other posters/readers)
Its true that many things co-evolved with us, like viruses and blood types(yes, we're somewhat on topic again) and even though we share many similar characteristics, like blood type, mayor, minor. Its also true that discovery of new things doesn't always invalidate the old way of thinking. Usuallyit just adds to what has already been existing. Like how multicellular life is a true breeding ground for single celled organism.
Similarly, the ABO+- blood type system was good enough to not kill patients, which is quite the improvement. Though only a fool would treat that system as gospel and align personalities with it. Now we're classifying the minor types and we're getting closer to rediscovering the uniqueness of everyones blood just as everyones beliefs,god or no god, is unique if you are willing to look.
I know that HN is not very appreciative of religion or god. I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are. I definitely wouldn't want our economy to become a paperclip maximiser but any perceived missteps should be dissected with a good blogpost on how we got here in the first place.
> I know that HN is not very appreciative of religion or god.
> I'd just like to change someones perspective on that as we've all evolved from very humble beginnings, both in our personal lives and as the silly monkeys we all still sometimes are
I am not sure what the relation is between these sentences.
Younger generations are now heavily into MBTI. And I mean heavily: you won't find a person under 35 or so who doesn't know their MBTI letters.
Yeah, cause while blood type is like horoscopes which absolutely no meaningful information, silly personality quizzes at least tell you back what you told them, so some kind of correlation exists, even if the categorization and implications are basically spurious.
I'm not sure they're really "into" mbti. Most of the people I know who know about mbti talk about their result ironically. About as seriously as talking about their star sign or which planet is in retrograde. I've yet to see anyone actually into it.
I am well below that age and I don't know my MBTI letters.
A native English-speaking HNer doesn't know their MBTI letters?
Well if that's not a typical young Korean, then who is?
very INTJ of you
I'm 31 and I don't know mine.
I remember reading something about peoples personalities being vaguely related to their names which makes even less sense. Unless peoples names subtlety influence their behavior. Perhaps if these blood type ideas are so prevalent in Korea and everyone from a very young age is aware of their blood type they might have a self fulfilling prophecy.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/family/father-names-both...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nominative_determinism
The names have a decent basic explanation. Names are stereotyped, exist on popular culture and have a bit of language influence (think bouba/kiki). Since some of the personality is inherited, parents' name preference will end up aligning slightly with the whole population which will end up aligning with the kids' behaviours.
Okay but what are the odds of someone named “Doug Bowser” becoming president of Nintendo of America without nominative determinism having at least a grain of truth.
Japanese people are the same, to the point that even anime characters have a blood type.
Yes it's defined for fictional characters, but I have the feeling it's more due to their obsession of details. I've never been asked my blood type there in years, whereas some Taiwanese girls asked me the question.
Well, it's definitely true to some extent, since there will 100% be some genes that contribute in some way to a person's personality that are colocated with genes responsible for blood type.
It's pseudoscience, nothing more.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blood_type_personality_theory
"nothing more" is an incorrect statement. The science is inconclusive, as science most often is.
[flagged]
I'm pretty sure you could get statistically significant correlation and publish it (at least in psychology) if you really wanted to :)
No worries, they won't go to set up blind dates with Guadelupians.
FWIW, in trying to map normal blood types like O- or AB+ to the 47 (now 48 or 49) blood group systems, apparently that is only basically a value on the type 001 (ABO Group System) and type 004 (Rh group system). People could still have antigens that further bifurcate in the other 45+ blood group systems.
So our ABO+/- system already doesn't have information on the other 45+ systems, and this new antigen wouldn't change that high level classification.