Abstract
PURPOSE: Although multiple mechanisms associated with Peyronie's disease (PD) have been proposed, details regarding etiologic factors, especially genetic, remain unclear. We examined the relationship of the ABO blood type system, known as a genetic factor associated with susceptibility to a number of diseases, with PD in Japanese males. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We compared 202 Japanese PD patients treated with surgery at our hospital between March 2004 and December 2019 with 846 randomly selected non-PD male patients who underwent urological surgery during the same period regarding distribution of ABO blood types. In addition, we assessed the risk of PD according to blood type group among all study participants using odds ratio (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI) calculations. RESULTS: The distribution of individual blood types in the control group was nearly the same as that in the general Japanese population. In contrast, O, A, B, and AB blood types were noted in 37.6%, 36.1%, 14.9% and 11.4%, respectively, of the PD patients, which was significantly different from the control group, where blood type O was found in 29.1% and B in 23.2% (p<0.05). Our results showed that as compared with patients with blood group B, those with another blood type were more likely to develop PD, among which type O had a significantly increased OR of 2.018 (CI, 1.271-3.205). CONCLUSIONS: These are the first reported results showing that ABO blood type may be associated with risk of PD, though further investigations are needed.