Friday 15 April 2011

genetics - Origin, or source, of rhesus negative in human blood

This is my first post here, so please be gentle. I recently learned that I have Rh- blood (I'm A-), and was idly looking into blood types on Wikipedia. I was surprised to find that relatively few (~15% of all) humans have it, and most of those seem to be European. Looking just a little further, I found a bunch of crackpot-looking sites that try to explain how people got Rh- blood, and what weird abilities they possess as a result.



I managed to find one site that seemed at least less laughable, which suggested that interbreeding with Homo neanderthalensis (or possibly Homo sapiens neanderthalensis, since the site seemed to indicate that there was some question about how different H. s. sapiens were from H. neanderthalensis) might have accounted for the introduction of the condition.



It seems that from more reputable (medical) sources, the only difference between Rh+ and Rh- is that complications can arise during pregnancy if the mother is Rh- and the fetus is Rh+. Indeed, most sites (e.g., WebMD) seem to explicitly state that there are no other differences of note.



I am not a biologist, or an anthropologist, or a life-science kind of guy at all. However, as a computer scientist, I like to think that I have both an open mind but one which demands scientific and/or logico-mathematical evidence for claims. Lots of the pseudo-scientific, paranormal, etc. theories on the web I basically dismiss out of hand, as explanations which are almost certainly fantasies, but most definitely baseless and untestable.



My question:




What, if any, is the current scientific understanding of the origin, or source, of rhesus negative blood in human beings? Do individuals with Rh- blood have any common (in a statistically significant sense) characteristics or health issues, aside from the issue with pregnancy and tending to be more European than not? Is there anything to continuing to look into this?




For context, I got started down this rabbit hole while looking into different dieting strategies, and found the "blood type diet". Just as an aside, I don't think there's a lot of merit to that diet... sounds like a fad thing. Any sources or information or help on this subject are appreciated.



EDIT:



I have been looking a little more, and I stumbled across a paper entitled, "The influence of RhD phenotype on toxoplasmosis and age-associated changes in personality profile of blood donors" which looks at the effect of the Rh- trait on personality changes caused by toxoplasmosis (if you Google the title, you should be able to download). Using Cloninger's and Cattel's personality factors, they seem to show a variety of things, including (a) personality differences between Rh+ and Rh- individuals not affected by toxoplasmosis, and (b) different reactions to prolonged toxoplasmosis affection in Rh+ and Rh- individuals.



I didn't even know that parasites could affect your behavior; that seems frightening on the one hand, but on the other, it's fascinating if it's for real, especially since the incidence of toxoplasmosis is not insignificant in most people. Anybody who knows anything about this or who reads the paper and can help me understand what it's saying would be doing me a great favor to answer/comment/chat. Thanks!

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