Investigating the role of blood types in 171 patients with tinea pedis and onychomycosis

Abstract

Introduction: Superficial fungal infections, which are considered as the most common risk factor for mucocutaneous infections, are still an important consideration of human health. Tinea pedis and onychomycosis are two common types of superficial fungal infections. Increased recurrence of these infections in certain subjects led us speculate the common factors that might contribute to our observations. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between blood types and two types of fungal infections tinea pedis and onychomycosis. 
 Material and Method: In our study, we questioned blood types of 171 tinea pedis and onychomycosis patients, who applied to our clinic between October 2015 and December 2016. Diagnoses were confirmed using mycotic examination and fungal cultures. We measured patients’ hemogram, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, urea and creatinine levels to determine their treatments. Patients were monitored during their treatments. 
 Results: We analyzed our results to determine the effectiveness of treatments, recurrence, and the relationship between our result and patients’ blood types. We could not find any significant relation between blood types and gender, educational status, residence addresses of patients, infected region, duration of fungal infection (p>0.05). Then we could not find also a significant relation between blood types of the patients and infection status of the family members that patients lived together with (p>0.05). 
 Conclusion: Our study shows that AB0 blood types are not significantly correlated with neither tinea pedis nor onychomycosis, which are dermatophytes, causing superficial fungal infections.