ABO Blood Type and Risk of Peyronie’s Disease in Japanese Males

A breakthrough discovery by Dr. Yozo Mitsui and his colleagues from the Department of Urology, Toho University Faculty of Medicine uncovers the association between the different ABO blood types and susceptibility to Peyronie’s disease (PD). PD is a benign condition in which a lump on the penis causes penile deformation and pain during erection. To date, the cause of PD has been undetermined. The results of this study are expected to provide direction in elucidating the etiology of PD as well as its prevention. The results will be published online in the journal The World Journal of Men’s Health on January 1, 2022. Currently, the results are available as a Forthcoming Article from November 3, 2021.

Key Points

A survey of Japanese patients with PD revealed that susceptibility to the disease differs depending on the patient’s ABO blood type.
Type O was found to be the most susceptible to PD, with 2.02 times greater odds than type B, which was the least susceptible.
This study will not only contribute to the elucidation of the etiology of PD but is also expected to assist in the prevention of the disease through understanding possible risk factors.

Dr. Yozo Mitsui
Professor
Department of Urology

Key Points

A survey of Japanese patients with PD revealed that susceptibility to the disease differs depending on the patient’s ABO blood type.
Type O was found to be the most susceptible to PD, with 2.02 times greater odds than type B, which was the least susceptible.
This study will not only contribute to the elucidation of the etiology of PD but is also expected to assist in the prevention of the disease through understanding possible risk factors.

Fig. 1. Blood group distribution in different groups:The distribution of ABO blood types is displayed as pie charts in Figure 1. That in Figure 1A shows the distribution in the general Japanese population, with O, A, B, and AB accounting for 29.2%, 38.7%, 22.2%, 9.9%, respectively [16], thus A is most common followed in order by O, B, and AB in Japan, as compared to O followed by A, B, and AB worldwide. In the present control group, type A had the highest proportion at 37.9%, followed by type O at 29.1%, type B at 23.2 %, and type AB at 9.8%, which were quite in line with that of the general Japanese population (Figure 1B). On the other hand, the PD patients most often had O type at a rate of 37.6% (Figure 1C), which was significantly higher than that of the control group (p=0.018). In addition, the proportion of B type in the PD cases was 14.9%, significantly lower as compared to the control group at 23% (p=0.009). The proportions for type A and AB in the patient group were not different from those of the general Japanese population or control group.

Table 1: Characteristics of Peyronie’s disease patients (n=202)

Table 2: Odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals for patients with Peyronie’s disease after division by ABO blood group

We assessed the risk of PD according to blood type among all study participants. The OR and 95% CI values for PD occurrence based on blood group are shown in Table 2, with blood type B was used as the reference. When compared with individuals with type B, those with type O were at greater risk of PD with an OR of 2.018 (95% CI 1.271-3.205, p=0.003). Likewise, as compared with type B, those with blood type A or AB were more likely to develop PD, though the differences did not reach statistical significance (OR 1.486 95% CI 0.937-2.325, p=0.092; OR 1.810 95% CI 0.993-3.302, p=0.053, respectively).

Table 3: Uni- and multivariate analysis for identifying factors associated with PD

To further clarify the relationship between blood type and PD, logistic regression analysis was performed using blood type (B type vs. other blood types) and the known risk factors for PD including age, obesity (BMI), penile trauma, and smoking habit. DM was not used as a factor in this analysis because DM patients were initially excluded from the control group. Since the control group of 846 patients also included children, 735 patients with mean age of 34.5 years, excluding those under the age of 20, were included in this analysis (blood type distribution was the same in both control group). As shown in Table 3, univariate analysis showed that all five factors were statistically significant, including blood type. Subsequently, multivariate analysis using these factors revealed that blood group (p=0.043) as well as age, penile trauma, and HT were significant factors associated with PD.

Table 4: Patient proﬁles after division by ABO blood type

Finally, we compared the clinical characteristics of PD patients after dividing by blood type. As shown in Table 4, there was a tendency for differences in those with Dupuytren’s disease (p=0.080) or who had undergone a surgical procedure (p=0.062), though no significant differences were found in other patient backgrounds. Regarding disease severity, the mean degree of penile curvature was 57 for type O, 61 for type A, 65 for type B, 55 for type AB, and there was no difference between blood types (p=0.164). Similarly, there was no significant difference in the direction of penile curvature between blood types (p=0.681).

Journal name
The World Journal of Men’s Health (Online edition: January 1, 2022)

Article title
ABO blood type and risk of Peyronie’s disease in Japanese males

Author(s)
Yozo Mitsui*, Hideyuki Kobayashi, Fumito Yamabe, Koichi Nakajima, Koichi Nagao (*Responsible Author)

DOI No. 10.5534/wjmh.210126

READ FULL ARTICLE HERE