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People with certain blood types are more likely to suffer a heart attack when exposed to high levels of pollution, people who have A, B, or AB blood types have an ‘elevated risk’, compared to those with the O blood type. Pollution is linked to a raised chance of a heart attack but it is the first time that the risk has also been linked to blood type.
The risk of a heart attack or chest pain doubled for people of type A, B, or AB blood when pollution hits high levels. In comparison, the risk rose by 40 percent for those with type O, according to researchers. The primary mutation we studied differentiates between O blood types and non-O, which includes positive and negative A, B, and AB blood types.
Dozens of genes have been shown in large international studies to predict the onset of coronary artery disease in people who are free of the disease. But the vast majority of people won’t have a heart attack unless they already have coronary artery disease. Nor is a heart attack a certainty even with heart disease.
A level of pollution at which the increased risk occurred for people with non-O blood types is threshold 25 micrograms of pollution per cubic metre. At levels higher than 25 micrograms per cubic metre of pollution, the increase in risk is linear, while below that level there’s little if any difference in risk. During a winter inversion, the PM2.5 pollution level can occasionally reach as high as 100 micrograms per cubic metre, but 50 to 60 is more typical.
The researchers found that people with type O blood also have higher risk of heart attack or unstable chest pain in times of high air pollution. Their level of risk is much smaller, at 10 per cent instead of the non-O blood type’s 25 per cent per 10 additional micrograms per cubic metre.
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