Hello and welcome to my channel, Medicine with Dr. Moran. I'm Dr. Keith Moran. I've
had quite a number of questions wondering about blood types and Covid-19. This video
is going to look at two things whether somebody's more likely to catch Covid
and whether they're more likely to be hospitalized based on their blood type.
I think a lot of the questions have to do with an early report from China
suggesting that the blood type A was associated with increased susceptibility
and blood type O was associated with reduced susceptibility to Coronavirus infection.
I've put a link to this study that I'm going to talk about below. Now subsequent small studies
from Italy as well as Spain reported that blood type A was associated with an increased risk of
severe Covid-19 and blood type O was associated with a reduced risk. Follow-up observational
studies from Boston, New York did not confirm any specific associations between any of the
different blood groups and disease. The authors of this particular study I'm going to tell you about
did this because they wanted to independently test whether a certain blood type is associated with
greater susceptibility to the infection or if you get the infection whether it's associated with
more severe Covid-19 disease. Now this study was done in Utah, Idaho, and Nevada. It was based on
records from 24 hospitals and 215 clinics. The study was done prospectively starting in March
2020 and carried on all the way through November 2020. They have an extensive database which was
searched for people who were tested for the virus and had a recorded blood type. In total they
looked at all individuals who were tested for the Coronavirus which was 107,796 individuals of which
11,468 individuals had a positive PCR test. They compared patients with a positive PCR test
in each blood type group to people with negative results. Now here are the results. Of the 11,468
people that had a positive result 39.6% were blood type A versus 9% with blood type B versus 3.2%
with blood type AB and 48.1% with blood type O. Now if you compare those numbers to the people who
had negative PCR tests you'll notice that they're very similar percentages noted on the chart.
These were not statistically different thus one can say that blood group does not have anything to
do with susceptibility to actually acquiring this Coronavirus infection. Next they looked at all the
positive test results to see whether there was a difference in blood groups to the likelihood of
being hospitalized versus not being hospitalized. This chart demonstrates these results.
As you can see there's no significant difference for each blood type. For example
blood type A had 39% whether you're hospitalized or not, blood type B 9% hospitalized or not,
blood type AB 3% in both groups, and blood type O was 48% versus 49%. None of those values were
significantly different statistically. They then looked at all the positive test results
and looked at who ended up in the ICU versus hospitalized patients who did not need to go
to the ICU. This chart did not demonstrate any significant differences either. The study authors
indicate that the population they studied was predominantly Northern European ancestry. about
90% of the people had this there was only a minor contribution of Hispanic and other ethnicities.
However it's a large study done in the USA that did not demonstrate the blood group was associated
with Covid-19 disease susceptibility or severity of Covid-19. For my viewers who wanted to know
more about this important question I hope it provides some further clarity for you.
Thanks for watching me on my channel Medicine with Dr. Moran today.
I'm Dr. Keith Moran. Remember get healthy and stay healthy.