Doctors in India identified a new blood group in a patient

Doctors from the southern Indian state of Karnataka have documented a unique blood group with a new antigen for the first time in the world. The discovery was made during preparation for a planned heart surgery on a 38-year-old female patient from Kolar district, reports The New Indian Express.

Initially, the woman was identified as having O Rh+ blood type, which is considered the most common. However, none of the standard O-positive blood samples were suitable for transfusion.

According to Ankit Mathur, a surgeon at the Kolar clinic, medical professionals discovered that the patient's blood was "panreactive" - incompatible with all available test samples. They were also unable to find a donor among the woman's 20 relatives.

The surgery was ultimately successful without blood transfusion, but the unusual clinical case attracted specialists' attention. Samples were sent to the International Blood Group Reference Laboratory in Bristol (UK) and the Blood Center in Bangalore. After ten months of molecular research, scientists confirmed the existence of a new antigen, named CRIB. The unusual clinical case was also presented at the 35th Regional Congress of the International Society of Blood Transfusion (ISBT) in June 2025 in Milan.

The Blood Center in Bangalore and the Indian Council of Medical Research have already begun creating a registry of donors with rare blood types, including potential carriers of the new CRIB antigen. Some specialists believe that the mutation may have resulted from marriages between close relatives, which are still practiced in certain regions of India.