i dont know, but you never know, you could be onto something. its been along time ago that i learned about the rh factor and having babies, but i know how the antibodies are in lupus. i like the show house too, pretty interesting even though i think hes intentionally obnoxious he is always smart in terms of treating the patients.

I love "House" too.However I hate to break this to you the Rh factor has nothing to do with lupus.
Rh stands for Rhesus,named after the monkey.
You are either Rh+ or Rh=. If positive then you have the rhesus protien on your red cells if you are negative you do not have the protien.Everyone is either = or +.
If you are negative and you are a woman and you get pg. then you get a RhoGam shot. It works on the same principle as a vaccine. A woman who is Rh= and pg with a Rh+ baby will develope antibodies against the positive Rh in the babys blood.This can lead to fetal demise or mental retardation(Not downs syndrom) in the baby. Before RhoGam babies born to Rh= moms had a total blood transfution in the delivery room as soon as they popped out. Today they get a RhoGam shot while pg and within 24 hours of giving birth.The RhoGam fools the moms body into thinking it has already made the antibody so that it does not make any more.Ater awhile it goes away and is not in the moms blood any longer but when she gets pg again her body "remembers" that is has made the antibody and does not attack the new fetus.A few very rare cases of Rh= moms still make the antibody and in those women they do intra uterine trasfusions. I helped with one at The Womens Hospital of Texas. It was way COOL!!You can see the baby and the blood that is taken out and the new blood going in.
After working in the blood bank for 15 years the only correlation I can see between a "rare" blood type and lupus is that people with a "rare" type will be more likely to have antibodies IF they ever had a tranfusion.
Lupus is an autoimmune desease.That means your body makes antibodies that attacks itself.The name lupus antibody is misleading it IS NOT an antibody to lupus.It is an antibody found in people with lupus and not all lupus patients have it.
I have O= blood around 5% of the total population has this type makes it fairly rare.I have lupus however my sister and my daughter both have O= and they do not have lupus.
One of the more rare types is AB= but I do not think that they have a higher rate of lupus.
I believe that lupus is a genetic screw up along the same lines as lack of G-6-PD. People without G-6-PD are allergic to sulfa drugs.
I think that people with alot of allergies probably have a higher rate of lupus.
Any way that my two cents worth from a lab tech point of view.
I asked my doctor why this happened to me and why did it start when I was 44. He told me it was in my genes and just sat there waiting for something to trigger it.Not a very satifying answer......Deb

I forgot......Did you know that you can go on line to Fox's web site and see "house" if you missed it on TV?They only go back about 4 shows. Makes it very nice if you have to miss a show. There is a 24 hour delay from the time it airs till it is posted on the web site. i watch it on Saturday morning when there is nothing good on TV gives me something to look forward to on the week end. Also NBC, ABC & CBS all have web sites you can watch thier shows on. Not all of them but the most popular ones.
To find the web site I went to Google and just put in nbc( or the one your show is on) and clicked on the thier web site. Then look for the place where it says watch full episodes........Deb

I like house also. I like how every couple of episodes he talks about Lupus as a possible diagnoses. It helps create awareness of our disease as well as lets other people know how serious Lupus can be.

My husband and I love the show "House" and fortunately we have a DVR so we record all the episodes ( and I can go back if I misunderstand something) Awhile back, in the summer I think, someone else posted the question about bloodtype but it wasn't about the RH factor, it was about type B blood. I think DeborahJean did a great job explaining the rh thing- I have a b- blood type, just fyi. I don't know how far this site goes back but you can probably find the other discussion about blood type if you searched it. Thanks, Lyn

My blood type is A so that's real common. But I hear it's herited but I have NO ONE in my family with it. Am I starting this horrible disease? Thanks for the explanation Debarah. That was an awesome explanation

I also have lupus and my blood type is also AB rh negative.

I love House but in England we are two seasons behind which sucks big time. Hugh Laurie is the best you should have seen him in his early days brilliant!

Ann X

House rocks!!! And yes he does keep bring up lupus so that does help get the word around!! hugs

Yep, I love House and only started watching it because of Hugh Laurie (I am a huge fan of his work). I don't usually like hospital dramas, but House is not the same as the others.

I too recall there was a post about blood type. I have SLE, A- blood and have also had a transfusion (placenta praevia with first baby and I lost buckets of blood). Thanks Deb for the technical explanation. I think genetics do play a huge part and doubt if blood type has anything to do with it. Like Deb, I was diagnosed in my early 40's, but the doctors say I have had it all my life, it just decided to make itself known a little later. I too asked why, but as is usual with Lupus, no-one can say what the trigger is...I think probably stress, hormones (I am perimenopausal) and maybe just age and dodgy genes. Lupus is one of those diseases which are tricky, and grasping at straws seems the norm, for both the sufferer and sometimes the doctors. From a medical point of view, it's probably quite interesting....can't say I find it that way myself!

First, MonScott,
Sorry, but someone's info is wrong somewhere. Are you SURE of your parents' blood types? My sister was convinced she had AB because some doc had told her so, but our mother is O and that makes it IMPOSSIBLE.

I want to clarify one thing (though deborah did a great job). Human blood types (without Rh factors) are A, B, AB, and O. To have A blood, that means that ONE of your parents needed to give you an A gene. So you MUST have a parent with either A or AB blood. There is NO OTHER WAY if you are a biological child. O, however, is recessive. For instance, my blood type is A, but my mother was O (which is recessive); the "second gene" from my father is an A.

Dad AB - contributes EITHER A or B
Mom OO - contributes an O

Children must be AO (which is A with a silent/recessive O) or BO (B with a silent O).

Now, my hubby is AO and could have given either A or O.
I'm AO and could give either an A or O.
Our child could have been AA, AO, or OO. (She is in fact O).

However, we had varioius Rh factors and so I needed the shots during my pregnancy because I was AO- and my hubby was AO+. Our daughter is OO+. The only time the 2nd letter of the blood type is important is for AB or for genetics.

As far as I've read, there have been no correlations between any particular blood type and lupus. An interesting blood note, however: during the 1980s when the blood supply was contaminated, many lupus patients did receive transfusions of HIV blood. Based on the number of normal patients who came down with HIV/AIDS after these blood transfusions, there SHOULD have been approx. 400 patients with lupus AND AIDS. There were actually only 2 (one neonatal). If you think about it the two diseases ARE mutually exclusive: you can't have an over active immune system and an inactive one. But the docs haven't figured out what to do with this interesting piece of information. It's tossed in the box with the patients who were exposed over and over to HIV and never got it. They still don't know why one person gets the disease when another doesn't because they don't understand completely how the immune system works. Now I'm not advocating going out and having unprotected sex (as if any of us had the energy to do that), but it certainly IS interesting....



I have my own bone to pick with "House". In an earlier season, he hid his PAIN MEDS in his lupus textbook because he said, "It's NEVER LUPUS.' But this last year, the writers have been on a kick about narcotics. A various times, Dr. House was told that he could either go insane from the narcotics (which isn't true if done right) or be in pain forever!! House got pain management, because happy instead of bitter, then went BACK ON NARCOTICS because he felt he could be "a better doctor if he wasn't happy". HUH? I'm sorry, but people in pain are terrible distracted and what kind of message does this send to people who are in pain?? And now the season finale has him checking into an insane assylum because he's gone insane from the narcotics.

Doesn't this show has a PAIN MANAGEMENT DOCTOR CONSULTING??? And don't tell me it's "just tv"; it perpetuates the problems that we as pain patients have with the world accepting us. It perpetuates the image that you can't be properly medicated for pain without being stupid, dangerous, high, etc.

BTW, I find medical errors on a WEEKLY basis on this show. Geez, you'd think they'd get it right at least ONE SHOW. My 12 year old watches this show and comes to me afterwards and says, "So, Mommy, what did they do wrong?" Yes, it's tv, but no doc would stay in business after mis-diagnosing each patient 9 times in an hour, doing procedures that aren't ethical or approved for humans on humans, and on and on.

So if you see your doc acting LIKE House, you probably should run for it.....

Tracy

tracy house went into mental hospital because of the suicide not the narcotics. Gosh are you a
dr. lol. To me its just a good show. hugs marilyn

Hmm, he's strangely appealing in a warped kind of way. At least if my Rheumatologist was like the character House, I might think he actually has a pulse.

I'm with Tracy regarding House. That show drives me nuts with its errors. A patient he diagnosed with Clostridium perfringens (this causes gas gangrene and would be quite obvious), and he made the diagnosis based on the fact that she smelled like grapes - Clostridium does not smell like grapes. Pseudomonas smells like grapes. Ack! Not to mention the gargantuan ginormous tapeworm they pulled out of a guy in another episode and said it came from fish... it was WAY too big for that! They have medical consultants.... go figure. I get nutty about this stuff. Like when the local news referred to anthrax as a virus. GRRRRRR.....
Doesn't make a difference if you don't know the difference. But I'm a professor of microbiology. I gripe so much my husband refuses to watch with me! Yet I still watch. Go figure! Maybe I just like to have something to fuss about :-)
But back to the question - no, Rh factor is very common (about 85% of the population in the US is Rh+), and blood types don't seem to have any affiliation with lupus. Some other blood markers, however, like B7 (a different marker not related to blood type), ARE affiliated with autoimmunity.
Have a great day, y'all!

Jenn

It took awhile, but House won me over,lol.
He is soooo obnoxious, but He shows a caring side too, sometimes,lol.
He mentions Lupus alot. Which is great for getting the word out there.