medwireNews - Gastroenterology - ABO blood type link to gastric cancer and peptic ulcers confirmed

MedWire News: Study results show that people with blood group A have a higher incidence of gastric cancer and those with blood group O an increased risk for peptic ulcers compared with those with other blood types.

These findings confirm previously suggested, but not conclusively proven, associations between blood groups A and O and these disorders.

Gustaf Edgren (Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden) and colleagues used the Scandinavian Donations and Transfusions database (SCANDAT) to identify the blood groups of 1,089,022 blood donors with a mean age at first donation of 33.4 years.

The donors were then followed up for 35 years - from first donation until death or 2002 - during which time 688 gastric cancers and 5667 peptic ulcers were recorded.

The team found that blood group A was associated with a significant 20% increase in gastric cancer incidence compared with blood groups O and B. People with blood group AB also had a slightly increased risk for gastric cancer compared with those with blood group O or B, but this was not statistically significant.

Conversely, blood groups A, B, and AB were associated with a significantly decreased incidence of duodenal (by 15-25%) and gastric (by 9-23%) ulcers compared with blood group O.

"In addition to confirming that individuals with blood group A are at a slightly increased risk of stomach cancer, we have, quite strikingly, also shown that individuals with blood group O have a clearly elevated risk… for gastric and duodenal ulcers compared with the other blood groups," write Edgren et al.

"Although no definitive conclusions can be drawn from this strictly observational investigation, with no access to data about Helicobacter pylori infection, a possible explanation is that these observations may result from different susceptibilities and immunologic responses to such infection," they conclude in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) is an independent clinical news service provided by Current Medicine Group, a trading division of Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2010

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Comments

At 11:03 on 08/03/2013 David Larbi wrote

why are blood group A individuals susceptible to gastric cancers?

post graduate student, University of Ghana

At 11:01 on 26/01/2011 Mwale Magare wrote

Is there any explanation as to why blood group A predisposes one to Gastric cancer? Is there a relation between the RBC surface proteins and gastric cancer like in the relation between H.pylori induced gastric and duodenal ulcers and blood group O?

medical student, Unversity of Nairobi

At 16:10 on 25/10/2010 Donald Wolochow, MD wrote

This tends to confirm earlier work by Hoskins et al
around 40 years ago. Their abstract appears below:
ABO and Rhesus blood group data have been examined for 1,680 patients treated for gastric cancer in four London hospitals.
The risk of developing gastric cancer was estimated to be 16% higher for group A subjects than for group O subjects, in close agreement with many previous reports throughout the world. More detailed analysis failed to support the suggestion that there was any special correlation between either ABO or Rhesus blood groups and the site of origin of the tumour within the stomach or the sex or age of the patient.