Blood type O more prone to ulcer?
This is a connundrum seen repeatedly in clinical medicine, where a simple notion of pathology is confounded by polymorphic differences such as ABO blood type. In this study the evidence cearly shows that the most common mediators of inflammation, immune response hormones such as Interleukin and Tumor Necrosis Factor, are elevated in type O individuals with H. pylori ulcers over the other ABO blood groups. Thus, a symptom (stomach ulcers) which can have multiple causes (bacteria, hyperacidity) has individual variations in severity and other characteristics which can be predicted by ABO blood type. Until these characteristics are more widely recognized and factored into clinical considerations, modern medicine will remain behind the other ‘pure’ sciences, such as physics and chemistry.
