AB0 blood group incompatibility and inbreeding effects: evidence for an interaction.

It is known that consanguinity reduces the chances of maternal-foetal incompatibility but it is not known whether inbreeding influences the expression of the effects of such incompatibility. This paper investigates and finds evidence for an interaction between inbreeding and AB0 blood group incompatibility on the expression of neonatal mortality, sibship precocious mortality, neonatal jaundice, asphyxia, and sex ratio, through screening of 3923 consecutive newborns. Inbreeding and incompatibility individually showed variable effects on the above parameters, but their interaction was such that, in the presence of inbreeding, incompatibility reduced the incidence/relative risk of all the above factors. Such a uniform negative interaction was presumed to be due to homozygosity of some pleiotropic genes caused by inbreeding.