Blood type A associated with higher risk of COVID-19

Scientists revealed carriers of the second blood group are more vulnerable to a new type of coronavirus due to a specific mutation, after analyzing the genetic data of almost two thousand carriers of the coronavirus.

"Our colleagues have already found evidence that blood type can affect the likelihood of infection with the virus. Our experiments confirm this and indicate that the first blood group owners have a lower chance of getting COVID-19, and the second is higher. The fact is that the mutations associated with it increase blood clotting, " the scientists write.

Earlier, doctors from China noticed that the probability of infection with coronavirus depends not only on the person's age, hypertension, or diabetes but also on the blood type. In particular, their observations showed that carriers of the second blood group (A) were 20% more likely to be admitted to hospitals with COVID-19 than the rest of the Chinese population, and owners of the first blood group (O), on the contrary, were infected with the coronavirus 30% less often.

A large team of physicians and molecular biologists led by Professor Andre Franke of the University of Kiel (Germany) has found out the genetic background of such differences. They conducted the most significant genomic analysis of carriers of coronavirus infection so far.

Geneticists decoded the genomes of 1,980 residents of Spain and Italy who were admitted to seven different hospitals with a severe form of coronavirus infection.

The researchers compared sets of mutations in their genes to each other, as well as how similar "typos" in DNA are common among healthy residents of their regions. In total, doctors and geneticists have studied how more than 8.5 million variations in the structure of genes affect the probability of development and the nature of the course of COVID-19.

It turned out that the probability of infection and the nature of the disease were most affected by two mutations, one on the third and the other on the ninth chromosome. The first increased the chances of severe forms of coronavirus infection by about 1.77 times. However, the second increased the probability of Contracting coronavirus by 1.32 times.