The French Blood Research Institute announced that a 54-year-old woman living in Guadeloupe in the Caribbean has a new blood type that has never been seen before, named “Gwada negative type”. This blockbuster discovery has also been officially listed as the 48th blood type system in the world by the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT), shocking the medical community.
According to CBS, the woman was found to have extremely rare antibodies in her body during a routine check-up before surgery in 2011. However, due to technical limitations at the time, further research was not possible. It was not until 2019 that scientists used “high-speed DNA sequencing” technology to finally solve the mystery and confirm that this is an unprecedented blood type.
Thierry Peyrard, a biomedical expert at the French National Blood Institute (EFS) who is in charge of this study, pointed out that the woman came from Guadeloupe and both parents carried the same mutant gene, so she inherited this unique blood type. He also admitted that the woman is the only person in the world with this blood type. “In other words, she is the only one in the world who can give herself a blood transfusion.”
This new blood type was named “Gwada Negative” (G-), where “Gwada” is the common name of Guadeloupe. It is not only representative of the region, but also easy to pronounce and easy to remember. It was unanimously recognized by the research team and finally named this.
In addition to the ABO blood type system, as gene sequencing technology becomes more mature, more unknown blood types are being discovered. The French National Blood Institute also expressed the hope that through this breakthrough, it will be able to find more potential cases with the same blood type around the world and further improve the quality of medical care for patients with rare blood types.
