Blood type does NOT affect the risk of severe Covid, the study finds

Blood type does NOT affect the risk of severe Covid, the study finds

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The study found that someone’s blood type does not affect the risk of developing serious Covid-19 or being admitted to hospital.

Previous studies have shown that people with type A blood are at risk of catching the coronavirus.

To determine if this is true, U.S. physicians analyzed health records of more than 100,000 people who had a Covid-19 test in Utah, Idaho and Nevada between March and November 2020.

Cross-reference to their Covid status with blood type showed that there was no link between the two, exposing the previous findings.

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People are at risk of catching the coronavirus if they have blood type A, a study has found. Lab-based analysis has examined previous reports that blood group has an influence on an individual's susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.

People are at risk of catching the coronavirus if they have blood type A, a study has found. Lab-based analysis has examined previous reports that blood group has an influence on an individual’s susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2.

Breakdown of British people by blood type

• O positive: 35%

• O negative: 13%

• Positive: 30%

• A negative: 8%

• B positive: 8%

• B negative: 2%

• AB positive: 2%

• AB negative: 1%

Source: 900,000 blood donors in the NHS blood and transplant register

Blood type is a trait that is determined by the DNA of a person and depends on the versions of genes that are inherited from a person’s parents.

These genes dictate the presence of antigens on the surface of red blood cells, the donut-shaped vessels that carry oxygen in the arteries and veins through the body.

Antigens are outstanding proteins and there are two versions, A and B, which occur on the surface of red blood cells, also known as erythrocytes.

Each person has A, B, A and B, or none. These people will therefore have blood group A, B, AB and O, respectively, and this is known as the ABO blood group system.

Another antigen in the cells, called Rhesus, is positive or negative and it determines whether someone is A-positive or A-negative, for example.

Blood groups vary according to community and ethnicity in their commonality, but in the UK, the most common group is O-positive, followed by A-positive.

Previous studies have found that people with type A blood are at greater risk of catching the virus.

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has a higher affinity for other cells - such as those found in the respiratory tract - which expresses a type A specific molecule called an antigen.

The coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 has a higher affinity for other cells – such as those found in the respiratory tract – which expresses a type A specific molecule called an antigen.

Trial finds that restorative plasma treatment does not reduce the risk of Covid-19

The administration of coronavirus patients with the blood of survivors does not increase their chances of getting better, a large study has found.

Scientists conducting the REMAP-CAP trial stopped enrolling infected ICU patients after finding ‘no evidence’ promoting a regenerative plasma therapy, which increased survival rates.

The therapy was also abandoned by the leading RECOVERY trial.

The former focuses on critically ill patients while the latter involves hospitalized but not critically ill individuals.

The findings from the study trials sound like the death knell for the once promising treatment put forward by the NHS, NIH and academics.

One study showed that people with type A have more receptors to which the virus can bind, making them more susceptible.

But Dr. Jeffrey Anderson, of the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute in Salt Lake City, performed the most comprehensive and controlled analysis to date.

‘With contrasting reports from China, Europe, Boston, New York and elsewhere, we began a large, prospective case management study involving more than 11,000 individuals recently infected with SARS-CoV-2, and we found no ABO associations with either disease susceptibility or seriousness, ‘write the authors of the study in their paper published today in JAMA Network Open.

“Given the large and prospective nature of our study and its extremely unfavorable results, we believe that important associations of SARS-CoV-2 and Covid-19 with ABO groups are unlikely,” they add.

The researchers can not explain why the previous studies came to different conclusions, but name different factors that led to the previous results.

They say pure chance, prejudice of the publication, genetic differences, geography and variants may have led to skewed data indicating that some blood groups are at greater risk.

However, the study found that although the blood group does not, other factors do increase the risk of Covid-19.

This included being a man, being older and also people who were not of white ethnicity.

“Among individuals with Covid-19, hospitalization was associated with male gender and age,” the researchers write. “Admission to an ICU is also related to male gender and age.”

The data also found that non-white people, including African Americans; Native American or Alaska natives; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islanders; Asians; and people who have not disclosed their ethnicity are more likely to test positive.

However, there was no link between these people and the severity of diseases.

Previous evidence of how blood type affects Covid

On March 17, 2020, just as the virus was taking hold in the UK and before the first exclusion was introduced, MailOnline reported that Chinese researchers found that people with type A blood were significantly more likely to catch coronavirus than those with type O blood. .

The study in Wuhan also found that people with type A blood are more likely to die from COVID-19.

In the general population, type O blood (34%) is more common than A (32%).

Among COVID-19 patients, however, people with type O were only 25%, while Type A accounted for 41%.

People with type O blood accounted for a quarter (25 percent) of the deaths in the research. Normally, people from Type O make up 32 percent of the people in Wuhan.

Researchers in China assessed 2,173 people who were diagnosed with the coronavirus, including 206 people who died after having the virus, in three hospitals in Hubei.

Academics compared the data of the infected Wuhan patients with 3,694 non-infected people in the same region.

Of the 206 patients in the study who died, 85 had type A blood, which equates to 41 percent of all deaths.

In the healthy Wuhan population, a city of 11 million people, 34 percent of the people are type A.

In the study group, 52 of the people who died were type O, which makes up a quarter of all deaths. Under normal circumstances, only 32 percent of the people are type O.

The figures for all infections, not just deaths, are 26 percent and 38 percent for type O and type A, respectively.

In November 2020, MailOnline again reported on a similar study in which it was found that people with type A blood were at greater risk.

Researchers from the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences in Toronto studied 225,556 people who had a blood test between 2007 and 2019 and a Covid swab in 2020.

People with type O blood were found to be 12 percent less likely to catch the coronavirus than other blood groups, a study found.

It also revealed that those with a negative blood type (O-, A-, B- or AB-) are on average 21 percent less likely to get the virus than people with a positive type.

People with type O or negative blood also have a 13 percent and 19 percent lower chance of getting or dying from severe symptoms, respectively.

In the UK, about 15 per cent of the population has a negative blood type and almost half (about 48 per cent) are type O.

About one in eight people (13 percent) is O-, which is 26 percent less infected and 28 percent less severe symptoms or death.

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