No, your blood type does not affect the risk of COVID-19 or severe illness, a new Utah study has found

Salt Lake City — Blood type does not consider contract risk COVID-19 (new coronavirus infection) Or developing a serious case of it, researchers at Intermountain Healthcare and other institutions have decided.

Their discovery, Published in the Journal of American Medical Association earlier this monthContrary to previous global studies and studies that have suggested that blood type is one factor in suffering from COVID-19 symptoms more than others.

Dr. Jeffrey Anderson, a cardiologist and researcher at the Intermountain Medical Center Heart Institute, said: , And the principal investigator of the study.

Hospitals use all kinds of possible risks to determine if someone should be hospitalized or what other care they should receive. The results of the study show that ABO blood group is not a necessary factor in assessing risk.

Anderson explained that the study was facilitated by many unknowns within COVID-19. Healthcare professionals around the world have had little or no answer as to why some people got sick more than others. If they can solve the puzzles, they can help provide better treatment to the patient.

The data identified not only the elderly, but also people with high obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and pre-existing lung or heart conditions. However, as COVID-19 struck China and Europe before the United States, researchers around the world got off to a good start with other potential factors.

A study published in China earlier last year was intriguing to Anderson. It was suggested that blood type is involved in COVID-19 infection. More specifically, it was suggested that people with blood type A are at high risk of being infected with COVID-19 and people with blood type O are at low risk of being infected.

Later, researchers in Italy and Spain published studies suggesting that blood types do not consider COVID-19 infection, but do consider the severity of new cases. With somewhat similar results, the study suggested that blood group A resulted in more severe cases and type O was less severe. It is unclear how much medical professionals relied on these studies for how they treated COVID-19 treatment.

“We started to get interested in this, and I was wondering if we should look into it, especially as there were other reports with variable results,” Anderson said. “In contrast, there was a person from Denmark who said it was infectious, but not the severity of the disease affected, and here from New York and Boston … there was no risk association here.”

As a result, researchers at Intermountain Healthcare, the University of Utah School of Medicine, and Stanford University sought to confirm the results of early studies.

They examined the results of 107,796 people who were tested for COVID-19 in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada between March 3, 2020 and November 2, 2020. ‘COVID-19 test results and their blood type. It also provided information on how severe it would have been if someone had been hospitalized.

About 10.6% of the approximately 108,000 people involved in the study were COVID-19 positive. According to the data.. When categorized by blood type, researchers found that the proportion of people who were positive for COVID-19 essentially reflected the proportion of people who were negative.

For example, blood group A accounted for 39.6% of positive results, but also 40.4% of negative results. Type B accounted for 9% of positives and 9.3% of negatives. Type AB accounted for 3.2% positive and 3.3% negative, and Type O accounted for 48.1% positive and 47.1% negative.

“There was no relationship between ABO blood group and infection risk,” Anderson said.

Similar patterns appeared in cases of hospitalization and intensive care units. Of the 11,468 positive cases, 2,326 were finally hospitalized. Of those hospitalized, 706 were admitted to the ICU.

Again, blood types accounted for 38.6% of hospitalized cases and 39.9% of non-hospitalized cases. It accounted for 36.4% of ICU stays and 39.5% of non-ICU hospitalized cases.

Type B accounted for 8.8% of hospitalized and 9.1% of non-hospitalized cases, 8.6% of ICU cases and 8.9% of non-ICU cases. Type AB accounted for 3.4% of hospitalizations and 3.1% of cases not requiring hospitalization. It accounted for 2.8% of ICU cases and 3.6% of cases that did not require ICU.

Finally, 49.2% of hospitalizations were associated with people with type O blood, compared to 47.9% when hospitalization was not required. It also accounts for 52.1% of all ICU cases in the data, compared to 48% when not hospitalized.

According to Anderson, this result was somewhat surprising to researchers, especially as many years of research revealed a link between blood type A and the risk of heart attack.

“We participated in this study thinking we would probably validate or validate the relevant reports, but found nothing,” he said.

That doesn’t mean that the study couldn’t find any other connection. The data confirm the theory that elderly people, men, and people in the minority community are at increased risk of becoming infected with COVID-19 and developing serious illness from COVID-19.

I think it is very important that we learn as much as we can about this virus and be able to fight it best.

– Dr. Jeffrey Anderson, Cardiologist and Researcher, Heart Institute, Intermountain Medical Center

Anderson added that the findings could be regional. Other factors may have led to different results in other global regions.

“Blood types vary in frequency, such as between populations,” he said. “There may be different associations with blood types that explain some of the other results, different results from other areas.

“In other words, blood type can be associated with several other features that cause illness or endanger people,” he continued. “This is different from what is called an association and a causal risk factor.”

For researchers like Anderson, discovering that there is no correlation between blood type and COVID-19 risk is one piece close to solving the COVID-19 puzzle.

It will be added to the ever-growing list of items since SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 were first identified in late 2019. Since SARS-CoV-2 was a new coronavirus, medical professionals started with the same knowledge as others. How it spreads and how it affects humans.

“I think it’s very important to learn as much as you can about this virus and be able to fight it best,” Anderson said. “It’s not over yet. It’s nice to see the light seeing and diminishing at the end of the tunnel, but this will continue at some level for the next few months, probably years.

“The more we can learn about it, the better we are.”

XX

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