A 2020 study done in the Wuhan Province of China found that people with type A blood had just over a two thirds higher likelihood of contracting the coronavirus than those with type O blood. The study called ‘Relationship between the ABO Blood Group and the COVID-19 Susceptibility’ compared the blood type percentages to people in Wuhan who had contracted COVID-19 to the rest of the local population.
Scientists compared the blood types of 2,173 people who had been diagnosed with COVID-19 to the blood types of the general population in the region. In the general population, type O was 34 percent, type A was 31 percent, type B was 24 percent, and type AB was 9 percent. The group of those with the virus was composed of 25 percent type O, 38 percent type A, 26 percent type B, and 10 percent type AB. Researchers concluded that “blood group A had a significantly higher risk for COVID-19 compared with non-A blood groups. Whereas blood group O had a significantly lower risk for the infectious disease compared with non-A blood groups.”
The study also found that 62% more people with type A blood died verses those with type O. This means an individual with type A blood was 68% more likely to die of COVID-19 than a type O counterpart.
A 2017 paper published by PubMed concluded that people with type O blood “May have some influence in protecting against blood transmitted infection.’ People with type A blood are more prone to hepatitis B and HIV than the rest of the population. People with type A, B or AB blood types are also more prone to heart disease and cognitive dementia than people with type O. There is also a theory that most Native Americans today have type O blood because it illustrates relative resistance to syphilis, which wiped out people with other blood types in the new world. 70% of the entire country of Peru has type O blood. The findings of the Wuhan study have not been peer reviewed. However, it could lead to more evidence showing benefits of having type O blood. This study is not a reason for anyone to consider themselves less likely to contract the virus. Cases have been growing exponentially in the past few weeks within many nations. COVID-19 could pose the biggest threat to humanity since World War 2.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v1
