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Observational Study
. 2021 Mar 11;11(1):5745.
doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-84810-9.

The effect of ABO blood group and antibody class on the risk of COVID-19 infection and severity of clinical outcomes

Marwa Ali Almadhi  1 , Abdulkarim Abdulrahman  1   2 , Abdulla Alawadhi  1   3 , Ali A Rabaan  4 , Stephen Atkin  5 , Manaf AlQahtani  6   7   8
Affiliations
Observational Study

The effect of ABO blood group and antibody class on the risk of COVID-19 infection and severity of clinical outcomes

Marwa Ali Almadhi et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected more than 100 million cases and caused immense burdens on governments and healthcare systems worldwide. Since its emergence in December 2019, research has been focused on treating the infected, identifying those at risk and preventing spread. There is currently no known biological biomarker that predicts the risk of infection. Several studies emerged suggesting an association between ABO blood group and the risk of COVID-19 infection. In this study, we used retrospective observational data in Bahrain to investigate the association between ABO blood group and risk of infection, as well as susceptibility to severe ICU-requiring infection. We found a higher risk associated with blood group B, and a lower risk with blood group AB. No association was observed between blood group and the risk of a severe ICU-requiring infection. We extended the analysis to study the association by antibodies; anti-a (blood groups B and O) and anti-b (blood groups A and O). No association between antibodies and both risk of infection or susceptibility to severe infection was found. The current study, along with the variation in blood group association results, indicates that blood group may not be an ideal biomarker to predict risk of COVID-19 infection.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Blood group distributions in the non-COVID-19 (control) and COVID-19 positive (COV +) samples.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Blood group distributions in non-ICU (COV + ICU-) and ICU (COV + ICU +) COVID-19 positive samples.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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