our people with blood type O less prone to suffer from covid 19 and does blood type a make people
more prone to covid 19 let me first start out by saying that people of all blood types can
get covid and people with all blood types can possibly dive covid if they get the infection
but based on several different studies it looks like people with blood type O have less a chance
of getting infected and people with type A might have a higher chance of getting infected data
from China was the first to show [ __ ] blood group association with Covid 19 infections the
researchers ow and others compared [ __ ] blood groups of controls for the general population
with over 2,100 Covid patients from three hospitals in Mahon across all three hospitals blood group
a was associated with a higher risk for Covid compared with non blood a groups whereas blood
group O was associated with a significantly lower risk of infection compared with non
Oh blood groups and there's another study done by Andre Frankie in Italy in Spain and in this study
they looked at DNA samples from 1980 Covid patients who were hospitalized for respiratory failure and
the study produced similar results but what about severity of illness so does having the blood type
O makes someone less likely to have severe illness compared with the type B or type A B or type A
well Zhou and others looked at case fatality rate in blood group a was linked to higher mortality
compared to blood group O and interestingly the association of blood type is not explainable by
other risk factors like obesity diabetes and high blood pressure recently there was a study
published by the personal genetics company called 23andme regarding evidence that blood type plays
a role in covid 19 so if you don't know 23andme is a company that sends out personal genetics testing
kits to people who are interested in finding out their genetic history and/or their predisposition
to certain genetically transmitted diseases according to their website they did a study
based on over 750,000 people there are preliminary results suggest that Oh blood type appears to be
slightly less susceptible to contracting the virus but the question is why and no one really knows
but there are a lot of hypotheses so blood type is determined by genetics in the genes determine
the specific proteins on the surface of these cells these proteins then have specific sugar
molecules that are added onto them they exist on our blood cells but also other types of cells as
well like epithelial cells people who are blood type a carry a sugar antigens people who are
blood type B carry B sugar antigens people with a blood type have neither a or B sugar antigens
what is the significance of this this means that the immune systems of people with type A develop
antibodies for B antigens people with type B blood type have antibodies for a antigens people with
type O blood have antibodies for both a and B antigens and so here's an interesting fact that
we knew even before covid there are studies showing that people with type O blood type
have lower levels of proteins that promote blood clotting more specifically people with blood group
O have 25% lower levels of something called von Willebrand factor or vwf this is in comparison to
types a B and type a B blood the reason for this is due to increased clearance of von willebrand
factor from the circulation von Willebrand factor is a protein that's always involved in
the formation of blood clots so if there's less von Willebrand factor that means there's likely
to be less blood clotting so this might explain why Type O blood type means less blood clots and
this might at least partially explain why people with type O overall have less severe disease with
covid because as you probably already know lots of people with covid Omonia also have blood clots
also we know that the virus that causes covid Tsarskoe v2 can replicate in cells that Express
blood type antigens this is what I was referring to as epithelial cells so this includes the cells
that form the lining of our lungs in the cells that form our tiny little air sacs alveoli in
the cells that line the inside of our mouth nasal passages this means that when an infected person
coughs or sneezes there's a possibility that they released viral particles that are coated with the
blood type antigens so this is at least a theory from some scientists let's say Bob is blood type O
that means he has anti a and anti-b antibodies now let's say there's someone next to Bob her name is
Karen Karen his blood type a and let's say Karen isn't wearing a mask and she coughs or sneezes in
Bob's face and that virus is flying through the air heading towards Bob's mouth well that virus
probably isn't flying solo it's probably flying in conjunction with that a Inogen from Karen from
her epithelial cells well because Bob is Type O he has antibodies to the a antigen and therefore
more likely to defend against the virus because it's writing with that a antigen when it gets
transmitted if Jane who is blood type B coughs and Bob's face it would be the same thing because
Bob also has B antibodies but if Bob coughs or sneezes in Karen's face or Jane's face there
will be no a or B antigen that accompanies that virus in the air but with this theory it doesn't
necessarily explain why type a is worse than type B so again this is a theory this is not proven
fact but it does look like Type A is associated with higher likelihood of contract and covid and
Type O is associated with a lower likelihood the reason why is still to be determined