Your blood type might signal whether you are prone to have an early stroke or not.
Besides lifestyle and environment, genes have a big impact on a person’s state of health.
One example is a person’s blood group, which is inherited from genes passed down by the parents.
A meta-analysis of genetic studies reveals that our blood type can determine whether we are at risk of an early stroke or not.
They found that people with blood type A are more at risk of an early stroke.
Also, those with blood type B were more likely to experience a stroke before the age 60 and later on.
The review is based on 48 genetic studies related to ischemic strokes, the most common type of strokes.
Ischemic strokes are life-threatening conditions caused by a blockage of an artery that supplies blood to the brain.
Professor Steven Kittner, the study’s senior author, said:
“The number of people with early strokes is rising.
These people are more likely to die from the life-threatening event, and survivors potentially face decades with disability.
Despite this, there is little research on the causes of early strokes.”
The research team compared genetic data from 17,000 stroke patients with nearly 600,000 healthy adults (non-stroke controls) who were between 18- and 59-years-old.
The team studied the ABO gene located on certain chromosomes in order to find out if there is any link between common genetic variants with the risk of having a stroke before age 60.
Their analysis showed that participants with early stroke were less likely to have blood type O and most likely to have blood type A.
Participants with blood group A were more likely to have an early stroke and those with blood type O had a lower risk of developing strokes.
Those with blood type B were at higher risk of having an early stroke and later in life.
Professor Braxton Mitchell, study co-author, said:
“Our meta-analysis looked at people’s genetic profiles and found associations between blood type and risk of early-onset stroke.
The association of blood type with later-onset stroke was much weaker than what we found with early stroke.”
Compared to people with other blood types, those with blood type A had a 16 percent higher risk of an early stroke.
The authors acknowledged that the increased risk of an early stroke for people with blood type A is small and so they don’t need to worry or do any additional health check and medical tests.
Professor Kittner said:
“We still don’t know why blood type A would confer a higher risk, but it likely has something to do with blood-clotting factors like platelets and cells that line the blood vessels as well as other circulating proteins, all of which play a role in the development of blood clots.”
Past studies have found that people with blood type A are at a slightly increased risk of experiencing deep vein thrombosis.
The study was published in the journal Neurology (Jaworek et al., 2022).
