Distribution of ABO and Lea blood groups in pulmonary tuberculosis in Chinese

Studies aimed at revealing the association between blood groups and pulmonary tuberculosis date hack to 1926 when Halber & Hirszfeld first reported their negative finding. Since then several reports have been published. Sasano (1931) listed 13 series in 10 of which there was no association. However, in the remaining three series A group persons appeared to be more susceptible to pulmonary tuberculosis. In our earlier studies we observed an association of ABO blood groups with pulmonary tuberculosis in Chinese patients: 0 group persons appeared to be more resistant than others to thc development of the disease. We did not observe an association in Malay and Indian patients (Saha & Banerjee 1968). Recently Jain (1970) and Hirano (1972) reported a significant excess of persons with blood groups B and AB (P < 0.001) among 1600 Indian and 21,365 Japanese tuberculosis patients, respectively. By recalculating our earlier data wc obscrved a similar association (P < 0.05). However, there are several recent reports showing no association or a different type of association. In view of these conflicting reports we thought it worthwhile to cxtend our earlier study to a larger sample. We have restricted this study to Chinese patients only, as an adequate sample of Malay and Indian patients was not available. In addition, we tested some of these patients for the Lea antigen to explore further the nature of the possible association with respect to secretor status.