ABO Blood Type Is Associated with Thrombotic Risk in Patients with Nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation

Albert Youngwoo Jang; Jeongduk Seo; Yae Min Park; Yong Hoon Shin; Joonpyo Lee; Pyung Chun Oh; Woong Chol Kang; Wook-Jin Chung; Jeonggeun Moon

doi:10.3390/jcm11113064

ABO Blood Type Is Associated with Thrombotic Risk in Patients with Nonvalvular Atrial Fibrillation

J Clin Med. 2022 May 29;11(11):3064. doi: 10.3390/jcm11113064.

Authors

Albert Youngwoo Jang¹, Jeongduk Seo¹, Yae Min Park¹, Yong Hoon Shin¹, Joonpyo Lee¹, Pyung Chun Oh¹, Woong Chol Kang¹, Wook-Jin Chung^{1

2}, Jeonggeun Moon¹

Affiliations

¹ Division of Cardiology, Department of Internal Medicine, Gil Medical Center, Gachon University College of Medicine, Incheon 21565, Korea.
² Gachon Cardiovascular Research Institute, Gachon University, Incheon 21936, Korea.

Abstract

Blood type is reportedly correlated with the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases, presumably because of its effect on thrombogenicity. However, the relationship between blood type and thrombotic complications in atrial fibrillation (AF) remains unclear. This retrospective study analyzed the blood types of 1170 AF patients (mean age, 70 years; 58% men) who were followed up for up to 4 years. Patients with greater than mild mitral stenosis or prosthetic valves were excluded. The cohort included 305 (26%) type O, 413 (35%) type A, 333 (28%) type B, and 119 (10%) type AB patients. The primary endpoint of major adverse cerebrovascular events (MACE) occurred in 52 (4.4%) patients. When longitudinal outcomes were plotted, AB blood type patients had worse prognosis than non-AB blood type patients (p = 0.039), particularly type O blood patients (p = 0.049). Multivariate Cox regression analysis revealed that AB blood type was associated with higher MACE rates (adjusted hazard ratio, 2.01; 95% confidence interval, 1.01-4.00; p = 0.048) than non-AB blood types independent of anticoagulation therapy duration or CHA2DS2-VASc score. These indicate that AF patients with AB blood type are at an increased risk of MACE compared to those with non-AB blood type independent of the duration of anticoagulation or the CHA₂DS₂-VASc score.

Keywords: ABO blood group; atrial fibrillation; risk factor; stroke; thromboembolism.

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIT) (No. NRF-2021R1A5A2030333). This study was also funded by (2021-ER0902-00, 2021-ER0902-01 and 2018-ER6304-00, 2018-ER6304-01, 2018-ER6304-02) by Research of Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency, and Gachon University Gil Medical Center (Grant number: FRD2020-11) and the Korea Medical Device Development Fund grant funded by the Korea government (the Ministry of Science and ICT, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, the Ministry of Food and Drug Safety) (Project Number: 9991006834, KMDF_PR_20200901_0164), (Project Number: 9991007387,KMDF_PR_20200901_0170).