A Further Study Of A-B-O Blood Groups and Differential Fertility among Women in Two Australian Maternity Hospitals

Abstract

Two previous reports have examined certain aspects of the problem of incompatibility between mother and child with respect to the A-B-O blood groups for samples drawn from Australian Maternity hospitals. In the first of these, Bryce and others (1950) examined the mother-child blood-group combinations for 7,909 women confined in the Queen Victoria Hospital, Melbourne, during the years 1944-48. In certain mother-child combinations they observed striking differences from expectation. These differences were significant for the excess over expectation of group A infants born to group B mothers, and for the deficiency of group AB infants born to group A mothers. There was also a marked, but not significant, deficiency of group A infants to group 0 mothers. The analysis suggested also the possibility that AB women are more fertile than women belonging to other blood groups.