Research Results: People With O And B Blood Are More Resistant To COVID-19

Illustration (Photo: Antara)

JAKARTA - Two recent studies have found that people with blood type O or B have a lower risk of contracting the corona virus and do not experience serious illness when they are infected with COVID-19.

Reported by Antara , Sunday, October 18, one of the new studies in particular found that COVID-19 patients with blood type O or B spend less time in the intensive care unit than their counterparts with Type A or AB.

They are also less likely to need ventilation and are less likely to develop kidney failure.

The two new studies, published in the journal Blood Advances on October 14, corroborate previous research on type O blood, in which people with blood type O or B did not become seriously ill when infected with COVID-19.

Researchers at the University of British Columbia, Canada, looked at 95 critically ill COVID-19 patients at a hospital in Vancouver, between February and April.

They found that patients with blood type O or B spent an average of 4.5 days less in the intensive care unit than those with blood type A or AB.

Groups with blood type A or AB stayed for 13.5 days in the ICU. However, the investigators did not see any association between blood type and length of hospitalization.

However, they found that only 61 percent of patients with blood type O or B needed a ventilator, compared with 84 percent of patients with blood type A or AB.

Meanwhile, patients with type A or AB are also more likely to need dialysis, a procedure that helps the kidneys filter toxins from the blood.

"Patients in these two blood groups may have an increased risk of organ dysfunction or failure from COVID-19 compared to people with blood types O or B," the study authors concluded.

Another study in June found a similar relationship: patients in Italy and Spain with blood type O had a 50 percent lower risk of severe coronavirus infection compared to patients with other blood types.

The second new study found that people with blood type O may be at a lower risk of contracting the coronavirus than people with other blood types.

The team screened nearly half a million people in the Netherlands who tested for COVID-19 between the end of February and the end of July. Of the approximately 4,600 people who tested positive and reported their blood type, 38.4 percent had type O blood.

That's lower than the prevalence of type O in a population of 2.2 million Danes, 41.7 percent, so the researchers determined that people with blood type O had disproportionately avoided infection.

"Blood type O was significantly associated with decreased susceptibility," write the authors.

In general, your blood type depends on the presence or absence of proteins called A and B antigens on the surface of red blood cells — a genetic trait that is inherited from parents. People with O blood do not have antigens.

Several other previous studies also concluded the same thing.