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. 2017 Mar 10;49(3):e301. doi: 10.1038/emm.2016.164

Figure 1.

Figure 1

ABO blood types and malaria incidence. (a) Frequency of ABO blood types in Africa, Asia, America and Europe. Information on the distribution of blood types A (cyan), B (magenta), O (white) and AB (black) in 82 countries was collected from the literature (Supplementary Table 1). Significant differences were observed between continents for the same blood type (one-way ANOVA test; P<0.0001) and between blood types within the same continent (one-way ANOVA test; P<0.0001). (b) Cumulative (2000–2015) malaria incidence in African countries was compared with blood type frequency. A negative correlation was observed between the frequency of blood-type A (Supplementary Table 1) and malaria incidence (Spearman r=−0.52, P=0.003), while the correlation was positive between the frequency of blood-type B and malaria incidence (Spearman r=0.58, P=0.001). No significant correlation was found between the frequency of blood types O (Spearman r=0.05, P=0.39) or AB (Spearman r=0.07, P=0.35) and malaria incidence. The countries with the highest malaria incidence have the lowest and highest values for the frequencies of blood types A (minimum value, MIN 18%) and B (maximum value, MAX 33%) in the population, respectively. The countries with the lowest malaria incidence have the highest and lowest values for the frequencies of blood types A (MAX 37%) and B (MIN 12%) in the population, respectively.