Blood groups and filariasis

Only a little is known about the studies done with filariasis in relation to blood groups. The present communication reports the results of a preliminary study carried out to investigate any relationship of ABO and Rho(D) blood groups in persons with circulating microfilariae (mf) in blood and with disease manifestations compared with healthy normal controls within a population in similar epidemiological and ecological conditions. Blood groups ABO and Rho(D) were investigated among 271 persons with filarial disease and 172 normal subjects from an endemic area of bancroftian filariasis. No relationship was observed between infection and blood groups. It appeared that blood groups and filarial infection were independent of each other. Also the sex of the individual and stage of the infection, i.e. persons with circulating mf only without manifestations and persons with established manifestation without mf, has no bearing on blood group inheritance. There were 95.05% of Rh-positive and 4.95% of Rh-negative persons in the whole studied population. The observations are similar to other studies.