Blood groups

Abstract

On June 14, 1868, Karl Landsteiner, an outstanding scientist, known for his works in the field of immunohematology and immunochemistry, who received the Nobel Prize for the discovery of blood group systems in 1930, was born in a Viennese family. In 1900, Karl Landsteiner published a work in which he described in detail the process of agglutination that occurs when the blood plasma of one person is mixed with the red blood cells of another one. At that time, the scientist came to the conclusion that this phenomenon was of an immunological nature. In 1901, Landsteiner decided to divide human blood into three subgroups: A, B, and C; a little later, the AB group was added to them, while the C group was renamed as O. In addition, it was Landsteiner who invented a fairly simple scheme that allows developing and introducing the basic principles of blood transfusion into wide practice, and the world got a wonderful opportunity to save hundreds and thousands of human lives. Thanks to this discovery, made more than 100 years ago, more than 100 million donations are made every year around the world, more than half of which are in developed countries with high living standards and incomes. Here people come to blood donation deliberately, and not for the sake of receiving financial or any other benefit. Thanks to blood transfusion, it became possible to successfully carry out many surgical interventions accompanied by the loss of a large amount of blood, exchange blood transfusion for hemolytic disease of newborns, and substitution therapy for many pathological conditions. Karl Landsteiner’s work was highly appreciated: in 1930, due to the discovery of blood groups, he became the Nobel Prize laureate in the field of medicine.