Frequency of ABO blood group and Rhesus factor (D) in patients of type 2 diabetes mellitus attending tertiary care teaching hospital of South India

Introduction and Objective: Diabetes mellitus (DM) is a group of metabolic diseases characterized by hyperglycemia resulting from defects in insulin secretion, insulin action, or both. After discovery of ABO human blood group system by Landsteiner, many researchers had tried to correlate between ABO phenotype and disease susceptibility. Many reports have appeared in recent past suggesting an association between blood groups and DM but published literature has produced conflicting results. The objective of the present study is to estimate the prevalence of ABO and Rh (D) blood group type among diabetics attending tertiary care teaching hospital. Materials and Methods: With institutional ethical committee approval and permission from Medical Director, we collected data of diabetic patients from medical records section for a 12 months period from 1st Jan 2015 to 31st Dec 2015. Study design was descriptive and retrospective. Data of ABO and Rh (D) blood groups were represented in simple number and percentage distribution. Results: A total of 1,038 diabetic patients' medical records were collected during the study period for ABO grouping and Rh (D) typing. Out of these 59.34 % were males and Rh (D) positive was seen in 95.56%. The frequency of blood groups O, A, B, AB was 32.36%, 29.95%, 29.28% and 8.37% respectively. The most prevalent blood group in both males and females was ‘O' and least prevalent was ‘AB' blood group. Conclusion: Our study findings suggested DM was more frequently seen in individuals with blood group ‘O' and these individuals should be closely monitored by the treating physicians. The trend of observed prevalent percentage of blood groups for DM was O>A?B>AB.