Two studies published on Wednesday suggest that blood type O people may have stronger immunity against the coronavirus and are also less likely to get other serious illnesses, however, experts believe that more research will be required on this matter. These researches provide more evidence that blood group or blood type has some sort of connection with the person’s vulnerability to the disease and also how much severe will the disease be.
In the first study, the researchers compared the data of around 473k Danish people who were tested for the virus to data of the general population of 2.2 million people. Among the people who were found positive for Covid19, more people were of Blood type A, B, or AB and blood type O people were fewer than the other blood types. It was also found from the study that the likelihood of Blood Types A, B, or AB people to get exposed to the virus was more than people with blood type O. Moreover, no significant difference was found between the rates of infection of the blood types A, B, and AB.
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The Author of the first study Torben Barrington believes that it is essential for the study that the proper control group is considered because blood types may differ in different countries and different ethnicities. However, Barrington believes that the control group considered for this study is strong as Denmark is a small country and the people are ethnically homogenous. He further added that the control of Denmark is population-based with a central registry for lab data and a public health system, so the discoveries made by the study have a strong foundation.
In the other study researchers in Vancouver, Canada studied data of 95 patients who were critically ill of the virus and were hospitalized. They discovered that people with Blood Types A and AB were vulnerable to more severe outcomes from the infection than people with blood type O. They also discovered that patients with the blood groups A or AB were more likely to need mechanical ventilation, as 84% of the patients with these blood types required it, which suggests that the lung injury from the virus in these blood groups was more likely. In contrast, 61% of the blood type O people required mechanical ventilation.
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The study from the Canadian researchers also found that Blood Type A or AB people also stayed for longer periods (an average of 13.5 days) in the Intensive Care Units than people with Blood type O or B (an average of 9 days). Moreover, Blood type A and AB people were found to be more prone to kidney failure.
Dr. Mypinder Sekhon, a neurointensivist in the intensive care unit and an intensive care physician at Vancouver General Hospital and also the author of the 2nd study, said that when he looks at patients he tries to stratify them, but repeated findings across different jurisdictions should indicate the same thing before a definitive marker can be placed. He added that this study does not replace other factors that make the person more vulnerable to the virus. So according to him if a person is of blood type O, he is not free to go anywhere and if a person is blood type A he should not start to panic.