A STUDY OF THE RELATION OF THE ABO BLOOD GROUPS TO PEPTIC ULCERATION AND HYPERTENSION

Abstract

The data available for this study consisted of 298 cases of peptic ulcer and 508 cases of hypertension among 12,904 employees in 4 locations of the du Pont Company. In each location, the proportion of persons with group O blood was greater among ulcer cases than among employees with no history of peptic ulcer. The difference in percentage of group O blood between the 2 categories of employees is about 5% (P=.07). In 3 of the 4 locations, it was found that among hypertensives there is a lower frequency of group O blood and a higher frequency of group A blood compared to non-hypertensives. The differences observed in these 3 locations range from 3.79? to 11.4%. In the entire set of data, the frequency of group A blood among the hypertensives exceeds that among the non-hypertensives by 3.7%, but the difference can be attributed to sampling error.