Published 12:52 IST, June 18th 2020

European study links COVID-19 infection with patient’s blood type and genes

In European study published in the Journal of Medicine on June 17, researchers explain why some people get seriously ill with coronavirus and some don't.

World News
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A team of European scientists says that they have found two genetic variations that are likely to get very sick and die from coronavirus, while also establishing a link between COVID-19 disease and patient’s blood type. In a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine on June 17, researchers explain why some people get seriously ill with the coronavirus, while most patients are asymptomatic. Type A blood group patients have a higher risk of contracting the novel coronavirus and might develop severe symptoms, while people with Type O blood have a lower risk and have mild symptoms usually, as per the study.

Our genetic data confirm that blood group O is associated with a risk of acquiring Covid-19 that was lower than that in non-O blood groups, whereas blood group A was associated with a higher risk than non-A blood groups, the researchers wrote in their report.

Further, they calculated that the patients that tested positive to COVID-19 and had Type A blood were at 45% higher risk of contracting the virus compared with other blood types. While patients with Type O blood were just 65% as likely to become infected collectively with other blood group patients.

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1,900 severely ill coronavirus patients observed

A professor of molecular medicine at the University of Kiel in Germany, Andre Franke, the lead author of the study observed 1,900 severely ill coronavirus patients in Spain and Italy and compared them to 2,300 healthy individuals in a genome-wide association study. Scientists drafted an entire genetic map to find two DNA variations that were more common in patients severely ill with the respiratory disease, as per the research study. "We detected a novel susceptibility locus at a chromosome 3p21.31 gene cluster and confirmed a potential involvement of the ABO blood-group system in Covid-19," researchers wrote in the study. And two places in the genome were linked with the risk of developing respiratory failure, they added.

The two genetic variations discovered by researchers could be associated with a person’s immune response. Cytokine storm — an overwhelming overreaction of the immune system — has been held as a cause for increased inflammation and the deadliest effect of coronavirus. A hematologist who is the chairman of the department of medicine at the Medical College of Wisconsin, Dr. Roy Silverstein, was quoted as saying that genes that control blood type also affect structures called sugars on the surfaces of cells, which in turn could affect the ability of the virus to infect those cells.