There are four components in our blood.
Lets know about the rare blood group Bombay Blood Group
The name Bombay Blood Group came into existence when a railway worker and another wounded victim were admitted to hospital in Mumbai who were required a blood transfusion in 1952.
When their blood groups were tested, none of the blood groups matched with their blood group.
Blood used to coagulate as soon as it is mixed with other known blood samples.
Doctors tried mixing with blood samples of 160 donors
and finally found that it matches with one person’s blood, who is a resident of Bombay.
Dr Bhende named this blood group as Bombay Blood Group.
How the Bombay blood group is different from other blood groups?
Through blood grouping system we can check the blood groups.
Normally, everybody has an H antigen which is converted to their respective glycoprotein
depending upon the enzyme (glucosyltransferases) which is carried out by the person.
A person with Blood Group B type has an enzyme which adds galactose to the H antigen.
A person with Blood Group AB-type has both the enzymes which add both the N-acetylgalactosamine & galactose to the H antigen.
A person with Blood Group O type has no enzyme.
Therefore, it just has a simple H antigen.
A person with a Bombay Blood Group type does not have any H antigen.
This makes them unable to produce the A or B type antigen.
They are the true universal donors because they can donate blood to A, B, O, AB & also Bombay Blood types.
Unfortunately, they can’t receive blood from any other groups except their own,
because their body doesn’t recognize the foreign H antigen present in the donor’s blood,
this leads to their body mounting an immune response, causing agglutination and may lead to the death of the recipient.
Bombay Blood Group is present in very few i.e., about 4 per million of the human population,
though in some places such as Mumbai can have occurrences in as much as 1 in 10,000 of locals.
Due to this less availability, it became difficult to get a donor in emergencies.
Like all other blood types, Bombay blood groups have a positive and negative type.
O positive Bombay blood is a rare one
and O negative Bombay blood is very rare as we can hardly find a donor.
How this did happen and why are these people so rare?
It is largely because of extensive inbreeding within the close community marriages.
Such marriages have happened in communities such as the
Gypsies
Russian
Jewish
Parsi communities.
It is thus likely that the Bombay Blood types have a common ancestral origin.
What if I have Bombay Blood Group?
A person with this rare group should always be careful.
This blood group is very rare and one shouldn’t be advised to donate to any other groups as they can donate blood to any blood group.
And they should take care of their health by maintaining fitness and diet.
Where can I get Bombay Blood grouping done?
During cell grouping or forward grouping,
Bombay blood group would be categorized as O group because it would not show any reaction to anti-A and anti-B antibodies just like a normal O group would do.
When a cross-matching with different blood bags of O group is done,
then it would show cross-reactivity or incompatibility.
A thorough evaluation is needed for this before concluding.
Reverse grouping or serum grouping is performed to check for confirmation of the Bombay blood group.
People with Bombay blood group can donate their blood to anyone, same as universal blood type, irrespective of their blood group,
but they can receive blood only from the same type.
Donating blood is a noble cause and people having this rare group must be positive and healthy and maintain their food habits to get fit for blood or platelets donation in emergencies.
Make aware of organ donation too.
Please share points if anything got missed here.
Gaining knowledge is not about knowing everything about something; it is about knowing something about everything.
Wow , thank you so much for such valuable info.
Thanks a lot