Blood Group AB Is Associated with Increased Risk for Severe Dengue Disease in Secondary Infections
1Queen Sirikit National Institute of Child Health and 2Department of Virology, US Army Medical Corps–Armed Forces Research Institute of Medical Sciences, Bangkok, Thailand; 3Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, Division of Communicable Diseases and Immunology, Silver Spring, and 4Henry M. Jackson Foundation, Rockville, Maryland; 5University of Massachusetts Medical School, Center for Infectious Disease and Vaccine, Research, Worcester; 6Department of Tropical Medicine, Medical Microbiology, and Pharmacology, John A. Burns School of Medicine, University of Hawaii, Honolulu
Why certain individuals progress to severe dengue disease is unknown. In this study, blood groups associated with dengue disease were investigated. ABO phenotypes were identified by use of serum from 399 patients with dengue‐virus infection who participated in a cohort study. ABO blood‐group frequencies were similar in primary versus secondary dengue‐virus infections. However, in secondary infection, individuals with blood group AB were likely to have dengue hemorrhagic fever grade 3 than either grades 1 and 2 combined (corrected P value, <.0001; odds ratio, 0.097 [95% confidence interval, 0.03–0.33]) or dengue fever (corrected P value, <.0001; odds ratio, 0.119 [95% confidence interval, 0.04–0.37]). To our knowledge, this is the first report demonstrating an association between ABO blood group and the severity of dengue disease.
Received 28 September 2006; accepted 13 November 2006; electronically published 23 February 2007.
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Potential conflicts of interest: none reported.
Presented in part: 55th meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medical and Hygiene, Atlanta, Georgia, 11–16 November 2006 (abstract 1010).
Financial support: National Institutes of Health (grant P01 AI1034533).
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S.K. and R.V.G. contributed equally to this work.