20 Dec Blood Type O Linked To Lower Risk of Diabetes

MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Dr Guy Fagherazzi
Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health
INSERM, Villejuif, France, and colleagues.

Medical Research: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?

Dr. Fagherazzi: Our work has been based on previous findings regarding the associations between blood type and the risk of stroke or coronary heart disease, where people with the O blood group seamed to have lower risk of developping the disease. The suggested mechanisms could be also be involved with type 2 diabetes. And our results were in agreement with our first hypothesis.

We have followed more than 80 000 women from the E3N cohort study, during 18 years and we have found that individuals with the O blood type had lower risk of type 2 diabetes than the others (people with groups A, B and AB).

Medical Research: What should clinicians and patients take away from your report?

Dr. Fagherazzi: It is a bit early to have recommendations for clinicians, as we are the first large epidemiological study to show this. There is a need to replicate our study in other populations with different genetic and environmental backgrounds. But our work can already provide new hypotheses to investigate for a better understanding of this disease, and consequently a better prevention. Some mechanisms are already suggested to explain what we observed, like a potential different composition of the gut microbiota according to the blood type, or lower levels of inflammation markers in individuals with the O blood type. Some studies are consistent with our findings, but we need to confirm these hypotheses.

Medical Research: What recommendations do you have for future research as a result of this study?

Dr. Fagherazzi: We can already suggest to clinicians and epidemiologists who are working on type 2 diabetes to include blood type in their studies as a potential risk factor. If our results are confirmed by others, one day blood type may be included in individual risk scores of diabetes, like any other well established type 2 diabetes risk factor.

I would like to emphasize the fact that our findings rely on a very large prospective cohort study and that our results are really encouraging for a better understanding of type 2 diabetes. The evolution of the epidemic of type 2 diabetes is dramatical, there is a need to find new risk factors of type 2 diabetes. This will ultimately lead to a better prevention and better targeted treatment.

Citation:

People with blood groups A, B and AB at higher risk of type 2 diabetes than group O

Dr Guy Fagherazzi and Dr Françoise Clavel-Chapelon, Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health, INSERM, Villejuif, France, and colleagues.
http://www.diabetologia-journal.org/

Last Updated on December 20, 2014 by Marie Benz MD FAAD