The Nuance
The Truth About Blood Types and the Coronavirus
Some experts say that reports linking certain blood types to lower infection risks are ‘flawed’
Recently, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that found links between Covid-19 and certain genetic and blood-type variables. While the authors emphasized the potential usefulness of their gene-related findings, which implicated clusters of genes on a specific chromosome in severe Covid-19 cases, most of the media attention centered on the blood-type findings. Among the more than 1,500 Italian and Spanish patients with the coronavirus included in the study, infection appeared to be less common among people with blood type O and more common among people with blood type A. (The type B’s fell somewhere in between.)
The study’s blood-type findings closely mirrored the results of an earlier paper from China, which also found an elevated infection risk among type A’s and lower risk among type O’s. “There are now several studies confirming the association, which is also seen for [SARS],” says Tom Karlsen, MD, PhD, co-author of the new study, and a professor of internal medicine at the University of Oslo in Norway.
SARS and Covid-19 stem from genetically related coronaviruses. So it makes some sense…
