30 Jul , 17:59
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Medical sensation: a unique blood group with new CRIB antigen discovered in India
Doctors from the southern Indian state of Karnataka made a historic discovery, recording for the first time in the world a unique blood group with a previously unknown antigen. The medical breakthrough occurred during preparation for planned heart surgery on a 38-year-old female patient from Kolar district, as reported by The New Indian Express.
During the initial examination, the woman was determined to have blood type O Rh+, considered one of the most common in the world. However, doctors faced a puzzle - none of the standard O-positive blood samples were suitable for transfusion.
Surgeon Ankit Mathur from the Kolar clinic explained that the patient's blood exhibited an unusual property of "panreactivity" - complete incompatibility with all available test samples. Attempts to find a suitable donor among 20 relatives of the woman also proved unsuccessful.
Despite the difficulties, the surgery was successful without blood transfusion. However, the uniqueness of the case prompted doctors to conduct an in-depth investigation. Blood samples were sent to the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory in Bristol and the Blood Center in Bangalore. After ten months of thorough molecular research, scientists confirmed the existence of a new antigen, which was named CRIB. This rare clinical case was presented to the scientific community at the 35th Regional Congress of the International Society of Blood Transfusion in Milan in June 2025.
The Blood Center in Bangalore, together with the Indian Council of Medical Research, has already begun forming a registry of donors with rare blood groups, including potential carriers of the new CRIB antigen. Some experts hypothesize that the rare mutation may have arisen as a result of marriages between close relatives, a practice that still persists in some regions of India.
