Correlation between Rheumatic Diseases and Rh Blood Groups

WE have recently determined the blood groups of 99 patients with some variety of articular disease (31 with rheumatoid arthritis, 31 with rheumatoid spondylitis, 15 with gout, 9 with disseminated lupus erythematosus, 6 with familial Mediterranean fever, and 7 with various other diseases). Statistical analyses demonstrated no significant heterogeneity among the results obtained for the different diseases. Accordingly, the data were pooled. For comparison we used Wiener's series of 1071 New York Whites 1 , as in a previous investigation 2 . There is a significant correlation between the absence of the Rh antigen D and rheumatic disease, as shown in Table 1. No correlation was found between the presence of rheumatic disease and antigens C or E, or with the ABO blood group system. There did, however, seem to be a correlation with the absence of antigen N (χ 2 (2), = 9.59, P = 8 × 10 3 ).