Rh factor

In addition, red blood cells may have a protein called Rh factor.

Alexander Wiener is a figure right out of a med school textbook: The award-winning physician helped discover the Rh factor in blood and advanced the fields of forensic medicine and serology.

In 1937, Landsteiner and Alexander Wiener identified another essential feature of blood, the Rh factor, which explained blood incompatibilities between certain mothers and fetuses—a leading cause of stillbirths at the time.

Her mother, Pat, a nurse, was negative for the Rh factor, an antigen in the blood.

Looking at just the Rh factor, the team found that diabetes risk was the same whether or a not a woman was Rh positive or Rh negative.