Is there a Relationship between the Blood Group and the Percentage of Lung Involvement in COVID-19‘S Patients?

Opinion

The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is spreading rapidly throughout the world. By 9 April 2021, 134,639,017 people have been infected by COVID-19 [1]; moreover, 2,917,974 of these patients have died. There are some factors associated with COVID-19 included age, sex, hypertension, and diabetes [2]. Furthermore, blood group is another factor associated with COVID-19. It was found that COVID-19 positive tests in blood group A were increased and decreased in blood group O, but the association between blood type and increasing COVID-19 morbidity or mortality has not been found [3].

As a faculty member who is teaching students in the main hospital of coronavirus - Tohid hospital - in Sanandaj, Iran. I want to share my experiences in confronting the chest CT of COVID-19 patients. What we saw in chest CT of these patients was the different percentage of lung involvement in blood groups. The percentage of lung involvement in patients with blood group O was noticeably higher than other blood groups. Unfortunately, a high percentage of outpatients with high lung involvement in chest CT were old and were unaware of their blood group, therefore we cannot claim that there is a significant relationship between lung involvement and blood group in COVID-19 patients. To the best of our knowledge, clinical presentations and papers have not yet addressed this issue, therefore proof of this relationship requires clinical studies.

References

1. Coronavirus Cases, Death, and Recovered.
2. Li J, Huang DQ, Zou B, Yang H, Hui WZ, Rui F, et al. Epidemiology of COVID-19: A systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical characteristics, risk factors, and outcomes. Journal of medical virology. 2021; 93: 1449-1458.
3. Zietz M & Tatonetti NP. Testing the association between blood type and COVID-19 infection, intubation, and death. MedRxiv. 2020.