Intra-Uterine Selection by the ABO Incompatibility of Mother and Foetus. III.

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Abstract
From the remarkable discrepancy in frequencies of spontaneous miscarriages of compatible and incompatible matings with respect to ABO blood groups, there should be differential natality rates between these two types of matings. A comparison of family size of the two matings was made for the population of two mining-town areas in Hokkaido. As the areas were homogeneous in the relative proportions of compatible and incompatible matings, analysis was made for the total data of the two areas. The net results were as follows: mean number of living children of compatible couples, 2.60; of incompatible couples, 2.17 (difference significant at the 0.1 per cent level). The influence of selection by ABO incompatibility upon the gene frequencies was discussed. For Japanese population and for the other populations in most parts of the world, selection would operate so as to decrease the gene frequencies of A and B and to increase the gene frequency of O. Effective control over family size would accelerate this tendency. Mortality rate of incompatible children was calculated from the presented data as 0.21, which agrees very well with that assumed in our previous study of literature using only the matings of mother O×father A or B. This value is so high, that mutation could not sufficiently compensate the losses of genes in each generation.

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