Family members with RH neg. or Pos. blood?

Hi Everyone,

  I don't know if this is a factor for lupus or not, but a couple of you have mentioned RH blood in your family in another post. My mom had RH neg blood as well and 2 of my brothers, but I have O+ blood. Who else has this blood type in their family?

  I tried to find some info on this, but couldn't. I did find  a little info on gene traits. If anyone else can find anything on this please share it with us. Here is what I found:

 

What causes lupus?

Lupus is an autoimmune disorder, which means the body's immune system attacks its own healthy cells and tissues.

Lupus is considered to be a multifactorial condition. Multifactorial inheritance means that "many factors" are involved in causing a health problem. The factors are usually both genetic and environmental, where a combination of genes from both parents, in addition to unknown environmental factors, produce the trait or condition. Often one gender (either males or females) is affected more frequently than the other in multifactorial traits. Multifactorial traits do recur in families because they are partly caused by genes. Females are affected with lupus three to 10 times more often than males.

A group of genes on chromosome 6 codes for the HLA antigens which play a major role in susceptibility and resistance to disease. Specific HLA antigens influence the development of many common disorders, many that are autoimmune related and are inherited as multifactorial traits. When a person has the specific HLA antigen type associated with the disease, they may have a genetic susceptibility to have the condition and be more apt to develop it. The HLA antigen associated with lupus is called DR2 and DR3. It is important to understand that a person without these antigens may also develop lupus, so that HLA antigen testing is not diagnostic or accurate for prediction of the condition.

I don't know what blood type my parents have, will have to ask my mom but I am O+ too!!!!

Lynn,

  Hmmm...that is odd! When you click on the tabs to calculate it doesn't give the blood type RH to choose from, only O's, A's and B's.

  RH blood is suppose to be a rare blood type. My mom had Rh neg as well as my two oldest brothers and me and one brother are O+. My next to the oldest brother was actually given a complete blood transfusion when he was born because of the blood type, so I guess I really don't know what type he is now. I will have to ask him when I talk to him again, but hardly ever talk to him.

  Ok, I just called my dad..lol. I had to make sure I knew what I was talking about. My mom had rh neg, my oldest brother does have rh neg and the next to the oldest had the blood transfusion at birth, but he didn't know what type that brother was given.

  I don't understand why Rh- and Rh+ aren't reconized as a blood type. I will have to ask at work about this when I go in today.  

                                                                 Babs

 I found this that shows all the blood types from the American Red Cross. Now this has me wondering if my mom and brothers are AB neg and they just called it Rh neg.

  

What's Your Blood Type? O Rh-positive: 38 percent O Rh-negative: 7 percent A Rh-positive: 34 percent A Rh-negative: 6 percent B Rh-positive: 9 percent B Rh-negative: 2 percent AB Rh-positive: 3 percent AB Rh-negative: 1 percent

 

Tks Carol,

   I really don't know what their blood type is other than Rh neg...I never heard anyone say A, B, O or AB, just the Rh neg. I just saw that the most rare was Ab neg...lol.

  Ok, I'm getting a good lesson in Blood Types 101 and it's very interesting...LOL  Also confusing..... .

                                                                           Babs

Hi all,

I'm going to take my shot at explaining what I think is going on. Please bear with me. The are "things" one can have in their blood (ok, there has to be a real term for thing but it would not be helpful). If you have the A whatever they label your blood type with an A (or a B for the B whatever) so that AB means you have both, A means only A, B means only B and O means your blood has neither. There is also an Rh factor. You either have this "thing" in your blood (denoted with a +, you'd think with the other scheme they would call it R but I think we're doing an apples and oranges on whatever these "things" are and Rh is a different thing than A, B) or you don't (denoted with a - ). So, AB+ means you have all of them and O- means you have none of them. Your body gets unhappy with a transfusion that contains "things" you don't have but is fine with blood containing things you don't have. So O- has none and everybody can take O- in a transfusion (so that is the universal donor) and AB+ has three things so AB+ blood can only be transfused to an AB+ person.

Ok, so an (any blood type A, B, AB or O doesn't matter) Rh- mother carrying an Rh+ baby will try to attack the baby because the babys' blood contains the, foreign to the Mother, Rh + factor. In the "old" days after such a birth if the Mother again carried an Rh+ baby, the Mothers immune system would figure out that this was an old invader and would attack the new baby, causing all sorts of problems for the new baby (although I believe the first Rh+ baby carried by an Rh- Mother is ok).

Too long. But I actually think I have the correct idea.

Stay Strong,
Sue

Hi..

 

I am A+, my oldest sis is rh-, and my first born son is 0- and has been donating to the redcross for years because of it's rarity...hmmmm that is all I know..the rest of my son's are A+

Tks Enigma and Sue for explaining this better. I have 3 older brothers, none of them have any type of immune disease, just me. It's so strange how that works. The ones in my family that do have immune disorders are on my dad's side, but I did have a distant cousin on my moms side that had MS.

                                                        Tks again, Babs