In a new review study from Johns Hopkins, researchers found blood types have nothing to do with the risk of contracting severe COVID-19.
They reviewed nearly 108,000 patients in a three-state health network and found no link at all between blood type and COVID risk.
Early in the pandemic, some reports suggested people with A-type blood were more susceptible to COVID, while those with O-type blood were less so.
An early report from China suggested that blood type might influence COVID risk. Subsequent studies from Italy and Spain backed that up, researchers said in background notes.
However, other studies out of Denmark and the United States offered mixed and conflicting results.
In the study, the team analyzed data from tens of thousands of patients with Intermountain Healthcare, a nonprofit health system of 24 hospitals and 215 clinics in Utah, Idaho and Nevada.
Of those in the analysis, nearly 11,500 tested positive for coronavirus, while the rest tested negative.
The team found blood type did not play a big role in anyone’s risk of contracting COVID.
Researchers suggest that people should be terrified if they have one sort of blood type or reassured if they have another blood type. It never made any practical difference.
The findings from earlier studies demonstrate why correlation is not the same as causation—in other words, why showing that two things are statistically linked is not the same as proving that one caused the other.
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The study is published in JAMA Network Open. One author of the study is Dr. Jeffrey Anderson.
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