Studies of associations between various diseases and the ABO blood groups have shown elevated relative risks for some categories of disease. A strong association between salivary gland tumors and blood group A has been reported, but studies are few and have yielded contradictory results. To investigate this association, we conducted an epidemiologic study of salivary gland tumors diagnosed in Jefferson County, Alabama (United States), 1968–89. All tumors were histologically confirmed. Blood group information was obtained for 200 individuals with salivary gland tumors, and the distribution of ABO and Rh blood type for cases was compared with that of 52,118 healthy blood donors from the same geographic area. The 38.5 percent of salivary gland tumors in cases with blood group A was similar to the 39.0 percent observed for controls (P=0.95). No differences were observed when benign and malignant tumors were considered separately, nor for any of the major histologic types of tumor. The distribution of Rh factor among cases and controls also did not differ significantly (P=0.08).
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Authors are with the Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 720 South 20th Street, Birmingham, AL, USA. Address correspondence to Dr Cole, Department of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, 720 South 20th Street, Birmingham, AL 35294-0008, USA. This study was supported by a grant from the US National Cancer Institute (NIH/NCI 2P30CA13148-21) and a Departmental Grant from the Shell Oil Company Foundation.
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Pinkston, J.A., Cole, P. ABO blood groups and salivary gland tumors (Alabama, United States). Cancer Causes Control 7, 572–574 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00051698
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00051698