{"id":230365,"date":"2026-02-02T21:11:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-03T03:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/scientists-identified-a-new-blood-group-after-a-50-year-mystery"},"modified":"2026-02-02T21:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-02-03T03:11:22","slug":"scientists-identified-a-new-blood-group-after-a-50-year-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2026\/02\/scientists-identified-a-new-blood-group-after-a-50-year-mystery","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Identified a New Blood Group After a 50-Year Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-identified-a-new-blood-group-after-a-50-year-mystery.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It represents a huge achievement, and the culmination of a long team effort.<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>A pregnant woman\u2019s blood sample taken in 1972 was mysteriously missing a surface molecule found on all other known <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/red-blood-cells-play-a-much-greater-role-in-our-immune-system-than-we-thought\">red blood cells<\/a> at the time.<\/p>\n<p>More than 50 years later, that strange absence finally led researchers from the UK and Israel to describe a new<a href=\"https:\/\/www.sciencealert.com\/why-do-we-have-blood-types\"> blood group system<\/a> in humans. The team published a paper on the discovery in 2024.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt represents a huge achievement, and the culmination of a long team effort, to finally establish this new blood group system and be able to offer the best care to rare, but important, patients,\u201d hematologist Louise Tilley from the UK National Health Service <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bristol.ac.uk\/news\/2024\/september\/blood-group.html\">said<\/a> in September 2024, after nearly 2 decades of personally researching this bloody quirk.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It represents a huge achievement, and the culmination of a long team effort. A pregnant woman\u2019s blood sample taken in 1972 was mysteriously missing a surface molecule found on all other known red blood cells at the time. More than 50 years later, that strange absence finally led researchers from the UK and Israel to [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-230365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=230365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230365\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=230365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=230365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=230365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}