O blood group as an indicator for abdominal aortic aneurysm

An aortic aneurysm is a general term for an enlargement (dilation) of the aorta to greater than 1.5 times normal size. Abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) primarily affects the population older than 50 years, with a prevalence of approximately 5%. There are a few theories about AAA etiology. Interest in the relationship between blood type and vascular disease has been established. The aim of our study is to evaluate distribution of blood-groups among the patients with abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) as well as to identify any kind of relationship between blood type and AAA.

The design of our research is combination of retrospective and prospective case-control study in a sample of population of Montenegro. Statistical analysis was performed in SPPS v 20.0, using the chi-square test for independent samples, with the probability level at p < 0.05 as significant, and p < 0.01 as highly significant.

O blood group was the most frequent among the examination group (53.11%), and A blood group was the most frequent among group without AAA (43.22%). Presence of AAA in individuals with O blood type was 1.46 higher than for the other blood types.

This finding leads us to suspect that O blood type can be indicator for AAA.