The announcement was made in a paper published in the Asian Journal of Transfusion Science, titled "Anti-EMM a rare specificity to the high-incidence antigen EMM in an Indian patient defining the new blood group system EMM (ISBT042)". 

The news also came as a shock to those around him, as the patient was previously believed to belong to the still rare, AB+ blood group. 

The director of Prathama Blood Bank in Ahmedabad and one of the co-authors of the study Dr Ripal Shah said, “He needed it for a coronary artery bypass grafting surgery. An antibody in the blood was reacting in saline and antiglobulin phases. Even his children’s blood was not matching with him,” she said.

This man's blood group is known as the EMM negative blood group and does not fit into the typically known blood groups of the human species, A, B, O or AB. People of this type also cannot receive any transfusions.

Dr Shah said that the patient had not found matches in Rajkot or Ahmedabad and that it was only after blood samples were later sent to Surat and then the United States that the blood type was concluded. The patient also has a brother with 'similar' blood who cannot donate due to health complications.