Naive question...
so is blood type “O” enriched in the human population in the areas
subject to lots of mosquitos that carry malaria?
Of course, there’s the compounding factor that the disease has effects
that range over a spectrum...but I’m just curious if this has played
out over millions of years in a higher rate of type “O” in malaria-ridden areas.
It’s not a naive question at all, it’s a good one.
I don’t have the data or how they came to looking at this, but I would assume that, in part, it may have been a result of data mining process where they discovered higher than “normal” occurance of Type O in [previously] affected areas.
FTA: ... “researchers in the US, Mali and Kenya studied African children” ...
I would think that part of the future research might include the study of blood type binomial distribution and/or histogram in the [previously] affected areas. If medical data is available (which is unlikely) it would be interesting to see the blood type distribution changes over time in those areas.
I’ve read that in South America, almost everyone is A or O. B just disappeared from the population.
Type AB makes you immune to cholera. I wonder if that is the only reason types A and B are still around.
Mike, thanks for the ping.
Annecdotal evidence but not really supportive: My husband and I have O+ blood. We have only suffered from the tersiana and tropica forms of the disease, never the cerebral and thankfully not the “blackwater” form.
Perhaps we haven’t yet been exposed to those forms.
I am not sure what the blood types of the indigenous population are. I do know that the government will not let a white person donate to a local. We supposedly don’t have compatible types.