Blood Type May Influence Risk of Cognitive Decline, Alzheimer’s

the Psychiatry Advisor take:

An individual’s blood type may influence their risk of developing cognitive decline, as people with ‘O’ type blood appear to have the least risk.

Researchers at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom and IRCCS San Camillo Hospital Foundation in Venice, Italy, conducted magnetic resonance images on 189 healthy participants. They also figured out the volume of grey matter within the brain and looked at differences in blood types.

Participants with the ‘O’ blood type tended to have more grey matter in the posterior part of the brain’s cerebellum, the researchers reported in the journal Brain Research Bulletin. Having more grey matter is thought to help fight off neurocognitive diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease.

In contrast, those with 'A', 'B' or 'AB' blood types has less grey matter volume in the temporal and limbic regions of the brain, including the left hippocampus, which is one of the first parts of the brain impacted by Alzheimer’s.

Grey matter declines as people age, but the results indicate that differences in blood types may accelerate the decline in some individuals.

“In all likelihood the biology of blood types influences the development of the nervous system. We now have to understand how and why this occurs,” Annalena Venneri, PhD, of Sheffield’s Department of Neuroscience said in a statement. “We now have to understand how and why this occurs.”