Relationship Between the ABO Blood Group and the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Susceptibility

  1. Jiao Zhao
  2. Yan Yang
  3. Hanping Huang
  4. Dong Li
  5. Dongfeng Gu
  6. Xiangfeng Lu
  7. Zheng Zhang
  8. Lei Liu
  9. Ting Liu
  10. Yukun Liu
  11. Yunjiao He
  12. Bin Sun
  13. Meilan Wei
  14. Guangyu Yang
  15. Xinghuan Wang
  16. Li Zhang
  17. Xiaoyang Zhou
  18. Mingzhao Xing
  19. Peng George Wang

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Abstract

To explore any relationship between the ABO blood group and the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) susceptibility, we compared ABO blood group distributions in 2173 COVID-19 patients with local control populations, and found that blood group A was associated with an increased risk of infection, whereas group O was associated with a decreased risk.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS software (version 16.0) and STATA software (version 13).
    SPSS
    suggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)
    STATA
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    Limitations: This study has several limitations. 1) The numbers of patients from the Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University and Shenzhen Third People’s Hospital were both small. Therefore, they cannot represent a solid replication analysis, although the data from these two hospitals showed similar risk patterns of ABO blood groups. 2) The control population groups used in this study lacked information on the subject age and sex and, therefore, a multivariate analysis to adjust the effect of the two factors was not possible. This, however, may not necessarily be a major issue since the ABO blood group distribution was similar among different age and sex groups of patients in the present study and in normal population reported previously7. 3) Due to incomplete information, the influence of the status of chronic medical conditions, such as vascular disease, diabetes mellitus and COPD, could not be adjusted through a multivariate analysis, which could potentially bias the conclusions of the present study since these factors may affect the severity of COVID-19. Conclusions: In this novel study, we for the first time report an association between the ABO blood group and COVID-19 susceptibility, demonstrating the latter to be a biomarker differentiating the former. Specifically, people with blood group A have a higher risk whereas people with blood group O have a lower risk for SARS-Cov-2 infection and COVID-19 severity. If verified by future studies, the findings in the present study ...

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1093/cid/ciaa1150
  3. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementEthical approval This study received approval from the Research Ethics Committees of the participating institutions , which waivered informed patient consent because the study only involved retrospective review of clinical data and because of the urgent nature of the study to investigate a new serious infections disease.Randomizationnot detected.Blindingnot detected.Power Analysisnot detected.Sex as a biological variableThe ABO blood group distribution was also similar between male and female patients with COVID-19 ( Table S1) .Cell Line Authentication*Corresponding authors: Yang (yanggy@sjtu.edu.cn); Wang (wangxinghuan@whu.edu.cn); Zhang (zhangli080806@163.com); Zhou (xiaoyangzh@whu.edu.cn); Xing (xingmz@sustech.edu.cn); Wang (wangp6@sustech.edu.cn) Running Title: ABO blood group and COVID-19 Key Words: ABO blood group, coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2, COVID-19, disease susceptibility Abstract: The novel coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) has been spreading around the world rapidly and declared as a pandemic by WHO.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Patrice et al. found that anti-A antibodies specifically inhibited the adhesion of SARS-CoV S protein-expressing cells to ACE2-expressing cell lines7 .
    anti-A
    suggested: None
    Given the nucleic acid sequence similarity8 and receptor angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 ( ACE2 ) binding similarity between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-29-11 , the lower susceptibility of blood group O and higher susceptibility of blood group A for COVID-19 could be linked to the presence of natural anti-blood group antibodies , particularly anti-A antibody , in the blood.
    ACE2
    suggested: None
          <div style="margin-bottom:8px">
        <div><b>SARS-CoV-29-11</b></div>
        <div>suggested: None</div>
      </div>
    
      <div style="margin-bottom:8px">
        <div><b>anti-blood group</b></div>
        <div>suggested: None</div>
      </div>
    </td></tr><tr><td style="min-width:100px;vertical-align:top;border-bottom:1px solid lightgray">Inhibition of the interaction between the SARS-CoV spike protein and its cellular receptor by anti-histo-blood group antibodies . Glycobiology . 2008 Dec;18 ( 12):1085-93 . 8 . Lu R , Zhao X , Li J , Niu P , Yang B , Wu H , Wang W , Song H , Huang B , Zhu N , Bi Y , Ma X , Zhan F , Wang L , Hu T , Zhou H , Hu Z , Zhou W , Zhao L , Chen J , Meng Y , Wang J , Lin Y , Yuan J , Xie Z , Ma J , Liu WJ , Wang D , Xu W , Holmes EC , Gao GF , Wu G , Chen W , Shi W</td><td style="min-width:100px;border-bottom:1px solid lightgray">
      <div style="margin-bottom:8px">
        <div><b>anti-histo-blood group antibodies .</b></div>
        <div>suggested: None</div>
      </div>
    </td></tr><tr><td style="min-width:100px;text-align:center; padding-top:4px;" colspan="2"><b>Software and Algorithms</b></td></tr><tr><td style="min-width:100px;text=align:center"><i>Sentences</i></td><td style="min-width:100px;text-align:center"><i>Resources</i></td></tr><tr><td style="min-width:100px;vertical-align:top;border-bottom:1px solid lightgray">Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS software (version 16.0) and STATA software (version 13).</td><td style="min-width:100px;border-bottom:1px solid lightgray">
      <div style="margin-bottom:8px">
        <div><b>SPSS</b></div>
        <div>suggested: (SPSS, <a href="https://scicrunch.org/resources/Any/search?q=SCR_002865">SCR_002865</a>)</div>
      </div>
    
      <div style="margin-bottom:8px">
        <div><b>STATA</b></div>
        <div>suggested: (Stata, <a href="https://scicrunch.org/resources/Any/search?q=SCR_012763">SCR_012763</a>)</div>
      </div>
    </td></tr></table>

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore is not a substitute for expert review. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers) in the manuscript, and detects sentences that appear to be missing RRIDs. SciScore also checks to make sure that rigor criteria are addressed by authors. It does this by detecting sentences that discuss criteria such as blinding or power analysis. SciScore does not guarantee that the rigor criteria that it detects are appropriate for the particular study. Instead it assists authors, editors, and reviewers by drawing attention to sections of the manuscript that contain or should contain various rigor criteria and key resources. For details on the results shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  4. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v2 on medRxiv
  5. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v1 on medRxiv