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Pandemic Reflections
It’s in the Blood: Early Findings on the COVID-19 Blood Type Conundrum
How science is chasing the missing link between blood type and COVID-19 susceptibility and severity
In the early stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, doctors noticed a pattern of infection: an elevated percentage of severe disease patients had type A blood.
Preliminary findings in China
In March 2020, a preliminary study showed that people with type A blood could be more vulnerable to being infected with the novel coronavirus than other blood types. Researchers at Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University examined the blood group patterns of 2,173 people diagnosed with COVID-19.
The research, conducted from statistics of admissions of patients with the disease, was published on the scientific platform MedRxiv. Back then, the research still needed to be peer-reviewed. Although the researchers acknowledged that their findings were preliminary and required more in-depth studies, they urged governments and medical authorities to consider the different blood types when treating infected patients. Experts pointed out that more in-depth studies were required to substantiate the preliminary findings.
The Chinese researchers found that patients with type A blood had a “significantly higher” infection rate and appeared to develop more severe symptoms of the virus. Of all the blood types, type O seemed to have the lowest risk of infection. According to the study, 85 of the 206 patients who died from COVID-19 in Wuhan had type A blood, a rate 63 percent higher than type O.
The research found the same pattern in different age and gender groups. Thus, the study suggested that the higher susceptibility of people with type A blood could be linked to the presence of natural antibodies in the blood. Still, back then, more studies were needed to prove this association.
As a result of the research, the experts suggested that it could be useful to adopt ABO blood type mapping in patients and medical teams as a routine part of managing SARS-CoV-2 and other coronavirus infections. These best practices could help define management options and…
