Blood Type

There are four major types of blood groups: A, B, AB, and O. Although there are only four major blood types there are subclasses which come into effect during blood transfusions. Blood transfusion is the transfer of blood from one person to another and occurs after major blood loss. The reason behind it is your body can’t produce enough blood fast enough and therefore your body can’t oxygenate it’s self, so blood is transferred intravenously through an IV drip to replace the lost blood and oxygenate your body. The major blood types can each be broken down into two subclasses based on the absence or presence of protein, making it either positive (+) or negative (-). This is called the Rhesus factor; if protein is present in the blood it is Rh positive and if protein is absent than it is Rh negative. For a successful transfusion to occur the same blood type with the correct Rh factor is needed or else a hemolytic transfusion will occur, which results in your immune system attacking the transfused blood cells and your blood will agglutinate (clump together). This is why usually O blood is transferred because it doesn’t have any antigens causing it to be accepted by the immune system regardless of blood type, which is why it is called the universal donor.

In the blood type lab we tested the blood types for A and B antigens by taking two samples of each blood type and adding A antigen to one sample and B antigen to the other. After mixing the sample with the antigen if the blood was grainy then it was positive for that antigen and if it was gelatinous it was negative for that antigen. This chart represents our findings.

Sources:
http://www.fi.edu/learn/heart/blood/rh.html
http://nobelprize.org/educational_games/medicine/landsteiner/readmore.html
http://health.yahoo.com/blood-treatment/blood-transfusion/healthwise--tc4111.html
http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/dci/Diseases/bt/bt_whatis.html Picture: http://healthcareblog.experience.com/2008_04_01_archive.html http://schools-wikipedia.org/wp/a/ABO_blood_group_system.htm