Abstracts

Inheritance of [italic]ABO[/italic] blood groups and secretion of [italic]ABH[/italic] substances are independent phenomena involving genes at different loci. These gene loci show polymorphism and their allele frequencies manifest inter population variations indicating that natural selection may be operative at this loci. [italic]ABO[/italic] blood groups and [italic]ABH[/italic] secretion genetic markers were analyzed in epilepsy patients to study possible association. The data for the present study were collected from Neurology Outpatient Department (OPD) and Epilepsy follow-up clinic at the Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh. A total of 400 epilepsy patients (200 idiopathic and 200 symptomatic) and 100 normal and healthy subjects, serving as controls, were studied. Both, patients and controls, belonged to the Northwestern region of India and were matched for sex and ethnicity. Their blood and saliva samples were analyzed for [italic]ABO [/italic]and [italic]ABH[/italic] secretion. [italic]ABO[/italic] blood group testing was done by the slide method using washed red cells of subjects and standard antisera. Saliva samples were collected in test tubes and kept in boiling water bath for 10 minutes. After centrifugation, the supernatant fluid was typed for [italic]ABH [/italic]salivary secretion by agglutination - inhibition technique using uniformly titred (1:4) anti-A, anti-B, and anti-H sera following the techniques given in Dunsford and Bowley (1967). The division of idiopathic and symptomatic types of epilepsy was done on the basis of clinical findings (EEG, CT scan and MRI). A lower frequency of [italic]AB[/italic] and excess of [italic]A[/italic] were observed among epilepsy patients. However, Chi-square test failed to reveal any significant differences between epilepsy patients and controls for [italic]ABO [/italic]blood groups. The relative incidence (RI) was significantly higher than one in three instances ([italic]O : AB, A : AB[/italic]; and [italic]B : AB[/italic]) in idiopathic epilepsy patients, but for none in symptomatic epilepsy patients. A lower frequency of non-secretors was observed in epilepsy patients. 30% of idiopathic and 18% of symptomatic epilepsy patients were non-secretors compared with 37% in controls. These differences were statistically significant. The study demonstrated statistically significant differences between symptomatic versus controls and idiopathic versus symptomatic, but insignificant between idiopathic versus controls for ABH secretion. Relative Incidence (RI) of secretors versus non-secretors was significantly higher than one in symptomatic epilepsy patients. On this basis, it has been hypothesized that ABH secretion may be associated with the susceptibility to epilepsy subject to confirmation by more data on this aspect.