Correlation between Lewis Blood Group and Secretor Character in Man

Abstract

A NEW blood group character, designated as 'Lewis', was first described by Mourant¹, who found that the blood of 25 per cent of English people contained the Lewis factor, and that this group character is independent serologically of the ABO, MN, Rh, P, Lutheran and Kell systems. Somewhat later, Andresen² described 'anti-L sera' which are now known to be anti-Lewis sera. These sera agglutinated the red cells of 21 per cent of adult Danes and the cells of about 70 per cent of Danish children less than seven months old. Andresen put forward the view that the Lewis blood group was inherited by means of two allelomorphic genes L and 1, the three possible genotypes being LL, LI and II. The data observed indicated that anti-Lewis serum agglutinates the red cells of adults if they are of genotype LL only, whereas in young children the genotype LI is also detectable.