Hyderabad: According to a Massachusetts study, there is no relationship between blood type and severity of COVID-19. The reports from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) dispels all co-relation researchers had given to COVID and certain blood types.
The study found that "there is no reason to believe being a certain ABO blood type will lead to increased disease severity, which we defined as requiring intubation or leading to death.”
Earlier, reports had linked a possible association between blood type A and a higher risk for COVID-19 infection and mortality.
MGH launched its own investigation by drawing on the massive database. It studied a population of 1,289 symptomatic adult patients who tested positive for COVID-19 and had their blood group documented.
Read:Why do people have different COVID-19 symptoms? Blood samples may hold key
The statistical analysis determined the independent effect of blood type on intubation and/or death of these infected patients.
“Inflammation is a particularly important finding because prevailing scientific thought is that COVID-19 wreaks havoc on the body through systemic inflammation, which can lead to morbidity and death,” explains senior author Anahita Dua, MD.
“We found, however, that inflammation markers remained similar in infected patients regardless of their blood type,” Dua said.
Researchers including those from the University of Cambridge in the UK had earlier identified proteins in the blood of coronavirus patients which are linked to disease severity. IL-6, they said, is a protein that is known to cause inflammation, and which, according to earlier studies, is associated with severe Covid-19 symptoms.
