Okay, so let’s say you’re in the hospital, and have an extremely unique blood type that the doctors can’t find a match for. What would happen? Like, for example, you have a blood type that can’t be paired with any other blood type or else blood rejection would occur. Would the blood rejection just kill you? Would you die from blood loss? I’m confused ToT
Comments
So you’re saying that you’d reject even O(neg) blood, which is considered the ‘universal donor’ type?
I’m a medical lab scientist who works in a blood bank – if you have a very rare blood type that we can’t find a match for, we’d give you “least incompatible blood” which may not be a perfect match but it’s close enough that the risk of having a reaction to it is very small. Of course, there is still a risk of you developing antibodies against this foreign blood, but it’s risk vs. reward situation and the benefits usually outweigh the small risk
First off, there’s no blood type so rare, that there aren’t any matches for it. Some types are a lot rarer than others, but there’s not that many different types (8 in total).
There’s also a type (type 0 Rh negative, and to some extend both type 0’s) that can be used as a universal donor, as it contains none of the antibodies – this is one of the most rare types though, and can be used in the rare cases where there’s no supplies of your actual match in the blood bank.
IF you by mistake got the blood that’s not a match, your immune system would attack and destroy the blood cells you just received. This can be fatal if not treated.
Edit: To try and understand the mechanisms behind it: There are 3 potential antigenes your blood can express. A, B and rhesus (Rh). Your immune system will attack blood cells with the antigenes not already known to your body.
If you are A+ it means you have antigene A and Rhesus. This means your body will recognize these, and only attack blood cells that expresses type B.
Of you are AB +, you can then receive any type of blood, because your body is used to all 3 types of antigenes.
If you are type 0 – then you can only get blood from other 0 -, because any of the antigenes A, B, and Rh would be foreign to your body.
The short version is that blood groups (and Rhesus factor) are only compatible in certain ways, because of the “shape” of the cells. Some people have a “shape” that we call “A”, some “B”, some have both “AB”, and some don’t (O). On top of that you either have a Rhesus factor (+) or don’t (-).
+/- is easy; if you don’t have the factor and you receive blood that does have the factor the immune system will respond.
Blood groups are harder: if you have O, it can be given to anyone but you can’t receive A, B, or AB because your blood doesn’t have the relevant antigens and your immune system will react. On the other end of the scale, AB can accept any blood because the immune system is used to A and B.
A/B can only take O or their “shape”.
If the recipient receives incompatible “shapes”, the immune system will attack the blood as an invader, making it “go bad” inside the body.
Hope that helps!
your body will likely have an immune response to incompatible blood types. hemolytic transfusion reaction. hemo (blood) lytic (destruction) – your immune system destroys the donated cells.
The different blood types are A, AB, B, and O.
O blood type means you don’t have A or B antigens. A means you have A type antigens. B means you have B type antigens. AB means you have both.
Then there’s an rh factor (positive if you have it or negative if you don’t). O negative has none of what an immune system could react to. It’s considered a universal donor.
A person who is AB+ can accept A, B, AB, or O types with or without the rh factor. They’re universal recipients.
Blood donation organizations will hunt you down if you’re O-. They are constantly sourcing blood of various types to ensure that there’s sufficient supply.
Someone who works in the medical field should be able to answer with some certainty, but I’m fairly confident they will not give you a blood type if it could cause a reaction.
ETA u/rattler843 clarified what they do if they don’t have a compatible type.
I imagine an O- person receiving AB+ blood is probably the highest risk, but maybe an A- person receiving an A+ or O+ is less risky (the only possible reaction there is to the rh factor). I’m sure there are some data that they use to determine the risk levels, which I can’t speak to. It could be that rh factor is a higher risk than receiving a B antigen.
Essentially, you’re trying to not give them antigens or rh factor if the recipient’s body doesn’t already have them.
I think what you are essentially asking is what happens if you receive the wrong blood type during a transfusion. If that is the case, basically your body would reject the blood, attacking it as a foreign invader, it can be life threatening.
https://medlineplus.gov/ency/article/001303.htm
The way you have it phrased is confusing though. There is no one whose blood is so rare or unique that there are no matching donors.
There are only eight possible blood types: A-, A+, B-, B+, AB-, AB+, O-, and O+.
But yes, getting incompatible blood will kill you.
Speaking from experience. I have an autoimmune condition that means I have antibodies to my own blood. Already being O+ I can’t receive a lot of blood already but also can’t receive my own. I was already in the ICU when I got a bad transfusion for my condition but it’s generally unpleasant. I recall my eyes were itchy and there as a bizarre dread that set in.
On a side note there is such a thing as a null blood type but it’s exceedingly rare to the point where even I don’t think I’ve received any.
Here’s how blood rejection works.
So normally your blood contains your immune system in the form of white blood cells. The main task of the white blood cells is to differentiate between “own” and “other”. All the time, white blood cells screen your body for irregularities. And All of the cells display a sample of whatever is happening inside the cell, or produce stuff specifically to the outside. The immune cells have a huge library of what your body can make (like, a sample of all your own gene products), so they cross check it with the displayed stuff. Most of the time they find your own, because it’s your own body, but if they find something different, they attack.
Note that this system didn’t evolve to make blood transfusion difficult. It evolved because if a cell makes something that’s not your own, that only can mean it’s a virus. This is how basically a virus infected cell signals the immune system “please kill me, I’m infected”. They display the sample of the virus so the immune cells find them and kill them.
A blood type that’s not compatible is not compatible because cells in the transfused blood have something on display that you don’t have. For example if your blood is A, then your own blood has A-type stuff on display so another person with type A has the same. The immune cells will not find it a threat. However a person with B in it will be unknown and each transfused red blood cell will be attacked and killed. This means that you don’t only lose the transfused oxygen carrying capacity, but all of a sudden you have a huge all-body havoc with destroyed cells and your own white blood cells going mad. Inflammation, pain, no oxygen carrying capacity and death. The size of the havoc depends on the amount of blood received and is more serious if you survive a first time somehow but get a second transfusion.
Now normally, you would not ever have a blood type that’s totally incompatible with everything, but it’s not theoretically impossible. Maybe you have a mutation that nobody else has, and your blood has something missing on display that everyone else does have. It means in practice that your blood acts like “type 0” for a new typing category but everyone else is “type XY”. To make things worse, you are normally tested for only known types, maybe you are still A in the ABO category, maybe Rh+ in the Rh category etc. And they will never know why you react this way. The good news is that if your condition is discovered, you can always deposit blood for yourself.
As I understand it, you’d need type O blood. The four most common blood types–A, B, AB, O–are designated by the presence of A and B markers. Only A means you have type A, same for B, both for AB, neither for O.
You can’t receive blood that has a marker your own blood doesn’t have. Your body sees it as a foreign body and attacks it like an infection. But type O blood doesn’t have any markers, so most people can receive it, even if they have a strange blood type with unusual markers.