Association of Brucella Infection with ABO Blood Groups in Children

Objective: Brucellosis is the most prevalent zoonotic infection world-wide. ABO blood groups have been associated with a number of infec-tious and non-infectious diseases. However, there is no study that in-vestigated whether blood groups have an effect on the occurrence of Brucella infection among children.Material and Methods: The files of 101 patients with a diagnosis of bru-cellosis, aged between 1 and 216 months, who applied to the pediatric infectious diseases outpatient clinic of a tertiary education and research hospital between January 2018 and August 2020, were retrospectively an-alyzed. The control group consisted of 204 pediatric patients who had no findings compatible with brucellosis or chronic disease, and whose blood group was performed for any reason.Results: In the blood group evaluation, the most common blood group A was observed in the patient and control groups. No statistically signifi-cant difference was found in ABO blood groups between the two groups (p= 0.454).Conclusion: This study showed that there was no difference in blood groups between pediatric patients with brucellosis and the control group.