Many Americans don’t know their blood type, but that knowledge can actually tip you off about your risk for certain medical conditions.
What’s in a blood type?
Potentially a lot, according to several studies that correlate different blood groups with everything from risk of heart disease to infertility. While none of these studies are conclusive about cause and effect (they can’t say X blood type causes Y disease) and any increased risks are still pretty small, the research does highlight the importance of knowing your type—A, B, AB, or O—and how it could affect your well-being. Plus, here’s the real reason blood is red.
Blood clots: Type AB, A, and B increases risk
Danish researchers have studied how blood type interacts with a genetic predisposition for deep-vein thrombosis (DVT), or blood clots in the lower legs that can travel to the lungs and become life-threatening. After analyzing data on about 66,000 people over more than 30 years, they found that those with type AB, A, or B had a 40 percent higher risk of DVT than people with type O, the most common type.
When the scientists did further analysis to see which factors have the biggest impact on DVT risk on a population level, they found that an AB blood type contributed to about 20 percent of blood clots; genetic mutations accounted for 11 percent, being overweight accounted for 16 percent, and smoking accounted for 6 percent, reported Time.com.
