The Lebanese COVID-19 Cohort; A Challenge for the ABO Blood Group System
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Abstract
A sudden outbreak of pneumonia caused by the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has rapidly spread all over the world facilitating the declaration of the resultant disease as a pandemic on March 2020. Predisposing factors for acquiring COVID-19 and for developing a severe form of this disease were postulated to be related to the epidemiological, clinical, and genetic characteristics of the patients. Biological markers such as the ABO blood group system were amongst these factors that were proposed to be linked to the variability in the disease course and/or the prevalence of the infection among different groups. Herein, we conducted the first retrospective case-control study from the Middle East and North Africa that tackles the association between the blood group types and the susceptibility to, as well as the severity of, SARS-CoV-2 infection. Contrary to the most acknowledged hypothesis, our results challenged the significance of this association and questioned the role of the ABO blood group system in dictating the severity of this disease. For future similar studies, we endorsed analyzing larger cohorts among different populations and we encouraged implementing more rigorous approaches to diminish the potential confounding effect of some underlying comorbidities and genetic variants that are known to be associated with the ABO blood group system.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.02.20166785: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: This study was approved by the Ethical Committee of RHUH.
Consent: Due to the retrospective nature of the study and because no identifying information relating to participants was included, written informed consent was waived.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources c. Statistical analysis: Statistical computations were performed using IBM SPSS statistics 24. SPSSsuggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data …
SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.02.20166785: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Institutional Review Board Statement IRB: This study was approved by the Ethical Committee of RHUH.
Consent: Due to the retrospective nature of the study and because no identifying information relating to participants was included, written informed consent was waived.Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Sex as a biological variable not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources c. Statistical analysis: Statistical computations were performed using IBM SPSS statistics 24. SPSSsuggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)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:While we acknowledge that the main limitation of our study is the sample size, we are the first to evaluate the association between different blood groups with the stratified outcome of COVID-19 while taking into consideration the gender and age factors. In conclusion, larger cohorts with more rigorous approaches are recommended to diminish the potential confounding effect of some underlying comorbidities and genetic variants, which are known to be associated with the ABO blood group and can be over-presented in COVID-19 cohorts26.
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.
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