Your blood type might put you at greater — or lesser — risk for heart attack. That’s the upshot of new research showing people whose blood type is A, B, or AB have an increased risk of heart disease and shorter life spans than those with type O blood.
But National Institutes of Health researchers who carried out the study said the findings shouldn’t overly concern people with blood types other than O because heart disease risk and life span are influenced by multiple factors, including exercise and overall health, the
LiveScience Website reports.
For the study, researchers tracked 50,000 middle-age and elderly people in northeastern Iran for an average of seven years. They found that people with non-O blood types were 9 percent more likely to die during the study for any health-related reason, and 15 percent more likely to die from cardiovascular disease, compared with people with blood type O.
"It was very interesting to me to find out that people with certain blood groups — non-O blood groups — have a higher risk of dying of certain diseases," said the study's lead investigator Arash Etemadi, M.D., an NIH epidemiologist.
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