Hh blood group
Rare blood group first found in Bombay(1982)
hh, or the Bombay blood group, is a rare blood type. This blood phenotype was first discovered in Bombay by Dr. Yeshwant Madhav Bhende in 1952. It is mostly found in the Indian subcontinent (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan) and Iran.
Problems with blood transfusion
The first person found to have the Bombay phenotype had a blood type that reacted to other blood types in a way never seen before. The serum contained antibodies that attacked all red blood cells of normal ABO phenotypes. The red blood cells appeared to lack all of the ABO blood group antigens and to have an additional antigen that was previously unknown.
Individuals with the rare Bombay phenotype (hh) do not express H antigen (also called substance H), the antigen which is present in blood group O. As a result, they cannot make A antigen (also called substance A) or B antigen (substance B) on their red blood cells, whatever alleles they may have of the A and B blood-group genes, because A antigen and B antigen are made from H antigen. For this reason, people who have the Bombay phenotype can donate red blood cells to any member of the ABO blood group system (unless some other blood factor gene, such as Rh, is incompatible). For the same reason, they cannot receive blood from any member of the ABO blood group system (which always contains one or more of A, B or H antigens), but only from other people who have the Bombay phenotype.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hh blood group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.