In the course of the corona pandemic, two studies provide explosive findings: The blood group could be decisive in protecting against infection and a severe course.
Munich – With the innovations in the context of the amended Infection Protection Act, the corona regulations fall in large parts of everyday life in many places. Although retailers welcome the relief, there is great uncertainty. Federal Minister of Health Karl Lauterbach (SPD) is also “concerned about the waning caution of German citizens” and advises voluntary compliance with the obligation to wear masks and the like. The results of several studies are therefore all the more explosive, which suggest that infection and progression are decisively decided after the Blood type.
Coronavirus: Studies provide insights into the blood group/course relationship
Specifically, the research work is about the probability of infection and the probability of suffering a severe course in the event of infection with corona. A connection with the blood group of the subjects was examined. It is therefore important for further understanding to classify the different blood groups.
In general, a distinction is made between four blood groups and the so-called Rhesus factor. Leaving aside the latter, there are blood groups A, B, O, and AB. These letters reveal which antigens surround a red blood cell; blood group A is antigen A, AB antigens A and B, blood group 0 has no antigens. These determine whether a blood donation is classified and accepted as endogenous, or judged as foreign and rejected. When donating blood cells, 0 is the ideal donor due to the absence of antigens, while AB is the ideal recipient.
Study of blood group: crucial role against the corona virus
As early as 2020, a study by the University Medical Center Schleswig-Holstein and the Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in cooperation with a Norwegian research team showed that there is a connection between the course of a corona infection and the blood groups 0 and A. “Significantly more Covid-19 patients had blood group A compared to the general population,” says Professor Dr. Andre Franke, Director of the Institute for Clinical Molecular Biology at Kiel University. “Conversely, significantly fewer patients had blood group 0, which means that this blood group offers 50 percent more protection against serious Covid-19 disease.”
Rachida Boukhari and Adrien Breiman from the University of Nantes have now continued this research and published their results in the journal Frontiers in Microbiology. The result is clear.
French study shows: Blood groups determine whether you are infected with Corona
The so-called “secondary attack rate” was examined, i.e. the cases in which a person who is infected with corona (so-called index case) infects another person living in the household. The study found that if the blood groups were compatible according to the above rules – for example, if the first person with the disease had blood group 0 and the person at risk was A, B or AB – then the latter was infected in 47.2 percent. In the opposite case, only 27.9 percent became infected.
“All in all, our observations can explain why partial protection occurs more frequently in people with blood group 0 than in people with blood groups A and B,” say the researchers. The antigens could ultimately play a major role in the probability of infection. For example, people with blood group AB – they are also the ideal recipients of blood donations – would be most at risk of contracting Corona. Blood group 0, on the other hand, would be the least likely to become infected, but could possibly cause the most infections.
Blood group A is more common in Europe than B or AB
Little attention has been paid to such a correlation between infection and blood group in Germany, although “researchers in other countries, including India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Iran, have noticed such a pattern”, as the MDR reports. The explanation of the French research team is plausible: “Since blood group A is more common than blood groups B and AB, people with blood group A in a population of Western European origin are less likely to encounter incompatible infected people. This likely explains why in previous cohort and case-control studies, blood type A individuals were at higher risk and blood type O individuals were at lower risk for Covid-19.”
Blood group AB is simply rarer in Europe, so the relative frequency of corona infections has not been determined to date. In this respect, the blood group could be of crucial importance for a corona infection – with regard to other diseases, connections have been suspected for a long time. (askl)
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