Does your blood type make you more susceptible to COVID-19? The info is conflicting
No matter what blood type a person has, they can still contract the novel coronavirus and die from it if the infection prevails.
But there have been several studies — both peer reviewed by medical experts and not — that report a link between the type of blood someone has and their susceptibility to COVID-19, the disease the coronavirus causes, as well as the severity of illness once infected.
The bottom line is that healthcare professionals and scientists alike don’t have definitive answers, and what they do know should not determine if one social distances or wears a mask, experts say.
However, further research could warrant a better understanding of the biology of COVID-19.
When asked if blood type should be considered when judging a patient’s coronavirus risk, Dr. Anahita Dua, a vascular surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, told The New York Times, “I wouldn’t even bring it up.”
What does blood type mean?
The type of blood someone has depends on that of their parents, and can be type A, B, AB or O.
Blood type is also determined by the kinds of antigens attached to the surface of a person’s red blood cells, according to Healthline. Antigens are harmless substances that can trigger an immune response by producing antibodies if they detect foreign cells in the body, like those of viruses.
Therefore, blood type can determine the fate of your fight against an infection, but each one differs in what kinds of antibodies they produce, and research on immunity and COVID-19 is still in its infancy, experts say.
Research suggests tie between blood type and COVID-19
The first clue that blood type might have anything to do with COVID-19 susceptibility arrived in March, when researchers in China said Type A individuals had a higher risk of contracting the virus than non-A-group types, McClatchy News previously reported.
The study on more than 2,100 coronavirus patients and 23,000 non-infected individuals also found that those with Type O had a lower risk of infection. And of 206 Wuhan residents that died from the virus, there were 63% more Type A fatalities than Type O.
However, the study has yet to be reviewed, like another paper from Columbia University that reported similar findings.
And again, the genomics company 23andMe studied more than 750,000 coronavirus patients and discovered Type O to be more protective against infection, even when scientists adjusted for age, sex, body mass index, ethnicity and co-morbidities.
Not all research agrees
A study conducted by scientists with Massachusetts General Hospital did not find Type A blood made someone more likely to contract the coronavirus, but they did find that Type O patients had a smaller chance of catching the disease — similar to previous results.
However, the effects were so small that “people shouldn’t count on it,” the Times reported.
“Blood type is not associated with risk of progression to severe disease requiring intubation or causing death, nor is it associated with higher peak levels of inflammatory markers,” the researchers said in their study published in July in the Annals of Hematology.
Meanwhile, other research says people with blood Type A are 50% more likely to need oxygen or a ventilator if infected with the virus, a June paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine said.
Contradicting research should not lead to behavior changes
The coronavirus has been circulating in the human population for about seven months, a period considered too short to fully understand the true nature of the pathogen, experts say.
Given current findings, “Group O shouldn’t think they aren’t going to get this disease. They shouldn’t be running around everywhere and not maintain social distance, nor should group A panic,” Dr. Sakthivel Vaiyapuri, an associate professor in cardiovascular and venom pharmacology at the University of Reading in England, told CNN.
“There’s so many underlying factors. We think of this as a respiratory virus, but it’s really a whole collection of things going on that we don’t understand yet.”
This story was originally published July 16, 2020 at 2:05 PM with the headline "Does your blood type make you more susceptible to COVID-19? The info is conflicting."
