Blood group O less likely to contract coronavirus infection

The scientists are working around the clock to identify the Covid-19 risk factors. Over the course of the past ten months, scientists and the public realised that covid caused by the infectious SARS-COV-2 virus show different symptoms for everyone, ranging from mild, atypical, moderate and more terrible ones. The severity can also differ based on parameters like age, gender and co-morbidities.

Now two new studies that investigated the potential role of blood type in predicting the risk, revealed that people with blood group O are less vulnerable to the novel coronavirus infection than any other blood type.

The two studies published in Blood Advances show that people with blood group O are at lower risk of contracting the Covid-19 or SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The study also identifies ABO blood group as a risk factor for SARS CoV-2 infection but not hospitalisation or death from COVID-19.

This means that that person with blood types A, B, or AB may be at a higher risk of getting infected with Covid-19 than people with type O.

However, the researchers didn’t find any significant difference in the rate of infection between A, B, and AB types.

During the course of the study, from February 27, 2020, to July 30, 2020, 841,327 individuals were tested by “real-time polymerase chain reaction” for Covid-19 infection in Denmark. Of these, 473,654 individuals were eligible for the test (7,422 positive and 466,232 negative).

Moreover, a reference group (control group) with relevant blood group information from 2,204,742 non-tested individuals was included.