If your blood is Rh-null, there are probably more people who share your name than your blood type. “There are nine active donors in the whole community of rare blood donors. One of the rarest in existence is Rh-null blood, which lack any antigens in the Rh system. For a patient, the effects of such reactions range from mild pain to fever, shock and, in the worst cases, death.īlood types are considered rare if fewer than 1 in 1,000 people have them. (Like many blood types, Vel-negative is tightly linked to ethnicity, so how rare it is depends on what part of the world you’re in.) If a Vel-negative patient develops antibodies to Vel-positive blood, the immune system will attack the incoming cells, which then disintegrate inside the body. For every 2,500 people, there's one who lacks the Vel antigen who shouldn't receive blood from the remaining 2,499. More than 99.9 percent of people carry the antigen Vel, for example. They’d accidentally discovered Rhesus antigens.Īdditional kinds of antigens have been discovered every few years since then. After running some lab tests, the doctors confirmed that even type O blood could contain previously unknown antigens. Type O was considered a “universal” blood type that anyone could receive, yet the woman experienced chills and body pain-clear signs that she was reacting to the blood. Scientists have been discovering unexpected antigens ever since 1939, when two New York doctors transfused type O blood into a young woman at Bellevue Hospital. Try fitting that into that little space on your Red Cross card. One person's blood can contain a long list of antigens, which means that a fully specified blood type has to be written out antigen by antigen-for example, O, r”r”, K:–1, Jk(b-). There are in fact hundreds of antigens that fall into 33 recognized antigen systems, many of which can cause dangerous reactions during transfusion. That’s why medical professionals pay attention to blood types in the first place, and why compatible blood was so important for the baby in Australia. Patients shouldn’t receive antigens that their own blood lacks-otherwise their immune system may recognize the blood as foreign and develop antibodies to attack it. There are millions in all, each classified according to the little markers called antigens that coat the surface of red blood cells.ĪB blood contains A and B antigens, while O blood doesn't contain either “positive” blood contains the Rhesus D antigen, while “negative” blood lacks it. Each of these eight types of blood can be subdivided into many distinct varieties. But this system turns out to be a big oversimplification. For the sake of simplicity, these are the types that organizations like the Red Cross usually talk about. You’re probably aware of eight basic blood types: A, AB, B and O, each of which can be “positive” or “negative.” They're the most important, because a patient who receives ABO +/– incompatible blood very often experiences a dangerous immune reaction. When the mother came in to give birth, the blood was waiting. So her organization reached out to the compatible donor, collected half a liter of fresh blood, and shipped it across the Pacific. The ARDP had compatible frozen blood on hand, but Nance knew that a frozen bag might rupture in transit.
From there, the request was forwarded to the American Rare Donor Program, directed by Sandra Nance. The problem was, the baby's blood type was so rare that there wasn't a single compatible donor in all of Australia.Ī request for compatible blood was sent first to England, where a global database search identified a potential donor in the United States. Doctors knew that the baby would need a blood transfusion immediately after delivery. Months before the delivery date, a routine checkup of the mom-to-be had revealed that the fetus suffered from hemolytic disease. Not long ago, a precious packet of blood traveled more than 7,000 miles by special courier, from America to Australia, to save the life of a newborn.
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