7 ms·

Evidence that blood type plays a role in COVID-19

48 points by molecule 6y ago

zmmmmm 6y ago
It looks like they have found a stastically significant correlation with a very small effect size, using an extremely simple regression model adjusting for only a handful of covariates, looking across, presumably, tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of SNPs. It seems highly irresponsible to title such a study in a way implying a mechanistic or causal link. I expected to find a whole lot of discussion in the post about all the other evidence supporting it, but nope - they shoved their data into a stats package, and put the result straight into a blog post with a misleading title. They don't even discuss if they adjusted for multiple testing. There's peer reviewed science, then there are pre-prints pending review. This is far far below either of those.
- op03 6y ago
  As long as your performance in the Social Media Metrics driven arms race for Attention increasingly determines what funding/employees/clients you attract, this kind of behavior will continue and escalate.
- dekhn 6y ago
  Maybe the title for this post has been changed but when I read it, and read the PR, they are both very cautious to just note that this Evidence For, not Proof Of, or, mechanism or causality.
SloopJon 6y ago
It seems that they're inferring the blood type from the ABO gene, although displaying this on the web site is a "sunsetted feature." Edit: the rhesus factor, on the other hand, seems to have been self reported.
air7 6y ago
This is a PR blog, of a private company, publishing "first blush" of "preliminary data". While any contribution to knowledge is warranted, this should not be circulating.
Kiro 6y ago
How do people know their blood type? I've never had a situation in life where someone has told me it.
- mxcrossb 6y ago
  They usually tell you when you donate blood, though I always forget within a week...
- peteretep 6y ago
  I needed to find it out to get a work permit in Asia, of all the weird things
- abdullahkhalids 6y ago
  Whenever you have any sort of blood test, you can ask them to include the type test. Sometimes they even do it, without even asking, because it is such a valuable test. In case of an accident, you might need a blood transfusion fast, and that delay to determine your blood type can be the difference between life and death.
peteretep 6y ago
Wikipedia suggests great shifts in blood type between both nationality and ethnicity. Can’t see any mention of the latter on that page.
drhagen 6y ago
It is good to remember when seeing a study showing a link between blood-type and some outcome: blood-type itself means very little biologically (it is one largely irrelevant gene among tens of thousands), but blood-type is heavily correlated with ancestry/race, which is heavily correlated with income/class, which is heavily correlated with lotsa stuff. When you see a blood-type effect, you are usually seeing a race effect or a class effect. It looks like this study tries to correct for "race [and] ethnicity", but not income. Even when you try to correct for these things, you can often still end up with a residual effect.
- nradov 6y ago
  Are there any studies which show a correlation between blood type and income?
rurban 6y ago
This was already known in April. But a Chinese study so nobody bothered. Two weeks later confirmed by a New Yorker hospital. https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/study-suggests-blood-type-a-associated-with-higher-risk-of-covid-19 https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/study-suggests-blood-type... [old news] This is now the confirmation study of both.
thescribbblr 6y ago
What happen with people have O+ blood group
legerdemain 6y ago
A group of hospital researchers in Europe published a preprint with similar findings.[1] It has received recent coverage in the New York Times.[2] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.20114991v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.20114991v... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/coronavirus-blood-type-genetics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/coronavirus-blood-...
gremlinsinc 6y ago
Hot damn, I may be > 400 lbs but I'm taking Vitamin D, Zinc, AND have o-positive. I also wear masks everywhere, cause I'm not stupid. I'll let you know if I survive. Before the lectures about 'have you tried losing weight', I was 690 in 2012, so yeah, it's just a SLOW burn, not a fast overnight thing, still going down, just slow and about 80 lbs is skin that needs removed and I just haven't been able to afford that surgery yet and was wanting to get lower still first anyways. W/ covid here, seems not the best time for electives anyways.
- thdrdt 6y ago
  "I'm taking Vitamin D, Zinc" Why aren't governments promoting this? For most people it is relatively easy to get and it is already proven to have benefits. You can still get Covid-19 but it reduces the effects significantly. It is also safe to take but you should not overdose (especially with zinc).
  - adrianN 6y ago
    As far as I know we only have observed correlation, and didn't do any studies to show causation.
    - gremlinsinc 6y ago
      As someone w/ a very deep D Deficiency, it can't hurt and may benefit, having o-positive blood is also a plus, so I guess we'll see as I'm sure I'll catch it someday. It's starting to explode here in Utah lately.... we went from 100/day avg to 560 last friday in new cases.
  - kwhitefoot 6y ago
    Most people who do not spend much time out of doors in sunshine should take vitamin D3 supplements according to my doctor. Especially in the winter in high latitudes. As far as I can tell this is standard national health service advice here in Norway, so some governments are promoting it but not specifically for COVID-19.
  - 6y ago
Arech 6y ago
Very clickbaity title. I remember Chinese researchers published about blood types in relation to Covid19 months ago.
mikhailfranco 6y ago
That is very old news, this is from March 11: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v2.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v... Type A is: 32% in the population 38% of those infected 41% of those that die. Type O is: 34% in the population 26% of those infected 25% of those that die.
- raverbashing 6y ago
  Am I missing this or the % in the 23aM page are not considering the proportion of the different types in the population? Also given that there seems to be an important coagulation component in the disease, this can make sense. But interesting enough, this is not too obvious. Because O type blood has both Anti-A and Anti-B antibodies, so if there was something in the virus that looks like the A or B antigen this would make sense, but it's the opposite.
- bacr 6y ago
  The article does reference that Chinese study, as well as a more recent one from researchers in Italy and Spain. It is great to see the scientific process at work — building evidence for a phenomenon. It also underscores one of the biggest benefits of preprints: faster dissemination of information.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
0xphk 6y ago
What is the reason that nearly everybody refers to Covid-19 as the name of the virus, instead using SARS-Cov-2? In the study they even refer to 'genetically studying covid' which does mean the disease caused by the virus, but I would assume one would study the virus genetically instead?
- Jaruzel 6y ago
  SEO is the reason. Most people are unaware that Covid is caused by a SARS variant, or that the underlying virus even has a different name.
  - zupa-hu 6y ago
    Or maybe covid is simpler than SA... ah can't remember never mind.
- im3w1l 6y ago
  Because having two unrelated names, one for the disease and another for the virus just confuses matters during layman discussion.
  - groestl 6y ago
    OTOH it makes it easy to detect layman discussions.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
>Although one study found the blood group O only to be protective across rhesus positive blood types, differences in rhesus factor (blood type + or -) were not significant in 23andMe data. Nor was this a factor in susceptibility or severity in cases. I'm O -ve and everyone else in my family are O +ve. Going by the rate of infections in my state, I'm of opinion that it's just matter of when and not if we'll get infected by COVID-19. So, I'll update my data here when that happens.
plastic_teeth 6y ago
Interesting.... But am I the only one who recalls seeing multiple articles stating that they suspect type A to be the most susceptible? It's curious because due to this study's findings it would appear that while type O fairs the the best, type A has slightly better chances compared to type B and type AB. So in other words type A is the second most resistant? Am I interpreting that right?
- christianmann 6y ago
  Type A is wayyy more common than B or AB, at least in the US (and I think Europe?). Not sure about other regions. That could distort the effect, which looks to be fairly minor in the first place.
nradov 6y ago
Not surprising. Serious COVID-19 cases frequently have blood clotting problems. Previous research on other diseases found that Type O blood is correlated with a lower risk of blood clots. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.119.313658 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.119.313658

48 points by molecule 6y ago

It looks like they have found a stastically significant correlation with a very small effect size, using an extremely simple regression model adjusting for only a handful of covariates, looking across, presumably, tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of SNPs. It seems highly irresponsible to title such a study in a way implying a mechanistic or causal link. I expected to find a whole lot of discussion in the post about all the other evidence supporting it, but nope - they shoved their data into a stats package, and put the result straight into a blog post with a misleading title. They don't even discuss if they adjusted for multiple testing. There's peer reviewed science, then there are pre-prints pending review. This is far far below either of those.

op03 6y ago
As long as your performance in the Social Media Metrics driven arms race for Attention increasingly determines what funding/employees/clients you attract, this kind of behavior will continue and escalate.
dekhn 6y ago
Maybe the title for this post has been changed but when I read it, and read the PR, they are both very cautious to just note that this Evidence For, not Proof Of, or, mechanism or causality.

SloopJon 6y ago

It seems that they're inferring the blood type from the ABO gene, although displaying this on the web site is a "sunsetted feature." Edit: the rhesus factor, on the other hand, seems to have been self reported.

air7 6y ago

This is a PR blog, of a private company, publishing "first blush" of "preliminary data". While any contribution to knowledge is warranted, this should not be circulating.

Kiro 6y ago

How do people know their blood type? I've never had a situation in life where someone has told me it.

mxcrossb 6y ago
They usually tell you when you donate blood, though I always forget within a week...
peteretep 6y ago
I needed to find it out to get a work permit in Asia, of all the weird things
abdullahkhalids 6y ago
Whenever you have any sort of blood test, you can ask them to include the type test. Sometimes they even do it, without even asking, because it is such a valuable test. In case of an accident, you might need a blood transfusion fast, and that delay to determine your blood type can be the difference between life and death.

peteretep 6y ago

Wikipedia suggests great shifts in blood type between both nationality and ethnicity. Can’t see any mention of the latter on that page.

drhagen 6y ago

It is good to remember when seeing a study showing a link between blood-type and some outcome: blood-type itself means very little biologically (it is one largely irrelevant gene among tens of thousands), but blood-type is heavily correlated with ancestry/race, which is heavily correlated with income/class, which is heavily correlated with lotsa stuff. When you see a blood-type effect, you are usually seeing a race effect or a class effect. It looks like this study tries to correct for "race [and] ethnicity", but not income. Even when you try to correct for these things, you can often still end up with a residual effect.

nradov 6y ago
Are there any studies which show a correlation between blood type and income?

rurban 6y ago

This was already known in April. But a Chinese study so nobody bothered. Two weeks later confirmed by a New Yorker hospital. https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/study-suggests-blood-type-a-associated-with-higher-risk-of-covid-19 https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/study-suggests-blood-type... [old news] This is now the confirmation study of both.

thescribbblr 6y ago

What happen with people have O+ blood group

legerdemain 6y ago

A group of hospital researchers in Europe published a preprint with similar findings.[1] It has received recent coverage in the New York Times.[2] [1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.20114991v1 https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.20114991v... [2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/coronavirus-blood-type-genetics.html https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/coronavirus-blood-...

gremlinsinc 6y ago

Hot damn, I may be > 400 lbs but I'm taking Vitamin D, Zinc, AND have o-positive. I also wear masks everywhere, cause I'm not stupid. I'll let you know if I survive. Before the lectures about 'have you tried losing weight', I was 690 in 2012, so yeah, it's just a SLOW burn, not a fast overnight thing, still going down, just slow and about 80 lbs is skin that needs removed and I just haven't been able to afford that surgery yet and was wanting to get lower still first anyways. W/ covid here, seems not the best time for electives anyways.

thdrdt 6y ago
"I'm taking Vitamin D, Zinc" Why aren't governments promoting this? For most people it is relatively easy to get and it is already proven to have benefits. You can still get Covid-19 but it reduces the effects significantly. It is also safe to take but you should not overdose (especially with zinc).
- adrianN 6y ago
  As far as I know we only have observed correlation, and didn't do any studies to show causation.
  - gremlinsinc 6y ago
    As someone w/ a very deep D Deficiency, it can't hurt and may benefit, having o-positive blood is also a plus, so I guess we'll see as I'm sure I'll catch it someday. It's starting to explode here in Utah lately.... we went from 100/day avg to 560 last friday in new cases.
- kwhitefoot 6y ago
  Most people who do not spend much time out of doors in sunshine should take vitamin D3 supplements according to my doctor. Especially in the winter in high latitudes. As far as I can tell this is standard national health service advice here in Norway, so some governments are promoting it but not specifically for COVID-19.
- 6y ago

Arech 6y ago

Very clickbaity title. I remember Chinese researchers published about blood types in relation to Covid19 months ago.

mikhailfranco 6y ago

That is very old news, this is from March 11: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v2.full.pdf https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v... Type A is: 32% in the population 38% of those infected 41% of those that die. Type O is: 34% in the population 26% of those infected 25% of those that die.

raverbashing 6y ago
Am I missing this or the % in the 23aM page are not considering the proportion of the different types in the population? Also given that there seems to be an important coagulation component in the disease, this can make sense. But interesting enough, this is not too obvious. Because O type blood has both Anti-A and Anti-B antibodies, so if there was something in the virus that looks like the A or B antigen this would make sense, but it's the opposite.
bacr 6y ago
The article does reference that Chinese study, as well as a more recent one from researchers in Italy and Spain. It is great to see the scientific process at work — building evidence for a phenomenon. It also underscores one of the biggest benefits of preprints: faster dissemination of information.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

0xphk 6y ago

What is the reason that nearly everybody refers to Covid-19 as the name of the virus, instead using SARS-Cov-2? In the study they even refer to 'genetically studying covid' which does mean the disease caused by the virus, but I would assume one would study the virus genetically instead?

Jaruzel 6y ago
SEO is the reason. Most people are unaware that Covid is caused by a SARS variant, or that the underlying virus even has a different name.
- zupa-hu 6y ago
  Or maybe covid is simpler than SA... ah can't remember never mind.
im3w1l 6y ago
Because having two unrelated names, one for the disease and another for the virus just confuses matters during layman discussion.
- groestl 6y ago
  OTOH it makes it easy to detect layman discussions.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

>Although one study found the blood group O only to be protective across rhesus positive blood types, differences in rhesus factor (blood type + or -) were not significant in 23andMe data. Nor was this a factor in susceptibility or severity in cases. I'm O -ve and everyone else in my family are O +ve. Going by the rate of infections in my state, I'm of opinion that it's just matter of when and not if we'll get infected by COVID-19. So, I'll update my data here when that happens.

plastic_teeth 6y ago

Interesting.... But am I the only one who recalls seeing multiple articles stating that they suspect type A to be the most susceptible? It's curious because due to this study's findings it would appear that while type O fairs the the best, type A has slightly better chances compared to type B and type AB. So in other words type A is the second most resistant? Am I interpreting that right?

christianmann 6y ago
Type A is wayyy more common than B or AB, at least in the US (and I think Europe?). Not sure about other regions. That could distort the effect, which looks to be fairly minor in the first place.

nradov 6y ago

Not surprising. Serious COVID-19 cases frequently have blood clotting problems. Previous research on other diseases found that Type O blood is correlated with a lower risk of blood clots. https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.119.313658 https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.119.313658