What is the Rhesus Factor?
The Rhesus factor, also known as the Rh factor, gets its name from experiments conducted in 1937 by scientists Karl Landsteiner and Alexander S. Weiner. These revolutionary case studies involved rabbits which, when injected with the Rhesus monkey’s red blood cells, produced an antibody present in the red blood cells of many humans–the Rhesus factor. The Rhesus factor is an antigen, or more specifically a protein, that exists on the surface of red blood cells. There are four general categories of blood: A, B, O, and AB. But each blood type is further labeled as positive or negative which is a reference to the Rhesus factor of the blood. People with the Rhesus factor, that is, people with the antigen present in their blood, are Rh-positive. So if a person has a blood type of A and has the Rhesus factor, she is A-positive, or A+. More than 85% of people are Rh-positive. People without the Rhesus factor, that is, people that don’t have the antigen in their blood, are Rh-negative. A person
The Rhesus factor is named after the Rhesus monkey that it was named after. Irregardless of our blood type, we all have a pair of rhesus genes. Depending on whether we are rhesus positive or negative, the rhesus factor will affect our heredity line. The rhesus positive is commonly known as D and the rhesis negative is commonly known as d.
