Scientists Discover New Blood Type, But There’s a Catch

Researchers are marveling at what they discovered in a 68-year-old French woman.

According to Live Science, the woman from the French region of Guadeloupe is the only known person in the world to have what doctors say is a new blood type. The outlet reports that researchers revealed the rarity during a presentation at the International Society of Blood Transfusion's Congress in Milan, Italy. 

Because this is a new blood type and the woman from the region of Guadeloupe is the only known person in the world to have it, the blood group has reportedly been named "Gwada negative," an homage to the woman's home region.

Per the Cleveland Clinic, there are four main blood types: A, B, AB and O. Doctors and researchers then check whether someone has the antigen A or B on your red blood cells. Once that's determined, they're also looking for a protein called the Rh factor, thus classifying blood type as positive for those who have the protein and negative for those that don't, which results in eight common blood types.

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But with the 68-year-old woman, doctors were befuddled at what they discovered in 2011. Live Science reports the woman was in Paris undergoing routine tests before surgery, but doctors couldn't figure out her blood type. They were stupefied when they couldn't find a match, either.

Stunned, researchers followed her case throughout the years. But eight years had come and gone before new technology, in 2019, finally caught up with science. Then, after two more years of research, the team sequenced her entire genome, thus revealing the new blood type.

The next objective? Researchers want to see if someone else out there possesses the unique blood type, and they're reportedly going to start searching among blood donors in Guadeloupe.