Ep.20 Are ticks attracted to blood type?

Surely you’re curious or at least amused by the question we’re answering today in the series “Myth or Fact”: Are ticks attracted to blood type? It’s an interesting piece of information to say the least that we found on the internet, and if you want to know the answer, we invite you to follow Mr. Alexandru Vladimirescu, PhD in biology and head of the medical entomology laboratory at the Cantacuzino Institute.

What are you curious about? Write us in the comments and we’ll ask the specialist for you!

Interview transcript

The internet pages tell us that ticks are more attracted to blood group A. Mr. Vladimirescu, is this a myth or a reality?

We had a discussion a while ago about mosquitoes, and did you understand…? it seems to be a very sensitive issue, and I was saying that blood group 0 is twice as often visited by mosquitoes as blood group A. Ticks have a slightly different mechanism of finding their prey respectively, their hosts, and so these things, I don’t think, apply in this case. I think it’s a myth that we can eliminate from the discussion.