Your body then releases von Willebrand factor, or VWF, into your blood so it can fix the damage to the vessel walls. We know the Covid virus damages the lining of your blood vessels. These Type A antibodies might make it more difficult for SARS-CoV-2 to attach to its receptor in Type O blood and multiply in the body, he explains.īut there’s another interesting layer to a potential protective element in Type O blood: something called von Willebrand factor, which is a glycoprotein in charge of repairing damage to blood vessels by prompting your blood to clot. “If you’re type O, you naturally make antibodies against Type A and Type B,” Dr. The difference may be the type of antibodies we produce depending on blood type. Either way, that would color how likely you are to not only get the virus but also how strong your symptoms are, he explains. It may affect your immune system’s strength or your inflammatory response to the infection. The most basic idea is that blood type might influence a person’s ability to fight the virus, says David Aronoff, M.D., director of the division of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville. We don’t know why people with Type O might possibly be more protected-but there are a lot of theories. I don't think that having Type A or Type B is the problem-it's just that they don't have Type O,' says Mark Udden, MD, professor of hematology and oncology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. 'It's pretty clear that Type O is protective to some degree. Yet no research so far has been able to pin down the molecular goings on that explain the mechanism behind why this might be so. Where are we now, in 2022, on blood type and Covid? Additional research and review papers have confirmed that we're in more or less the same place: It looks like there really is an association between Type A blood and susceptibility to Covid and Type O blood and less susceptibility. Then, a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine confirmed the idea with a peer-reviewed study: Folks with Type A blood were 45 percent more likely to become infected with Covid than those with other blood types, while those with Type O were 35 percent less likely. Even DNA testing company 23andMe tapped their customers and found that among 750,000 people who were diagnosed and hospitalized for Covid (this was prior to vaccines), those with type O were more protected. Researchers in China first shared this idea in March 2020, and the findings were echoed by a paper out of Columbia University a month later. That year, research in the journal PLOS Genetics revealed that people with Type A blood are more likely to have a severe case of Covid-19.Ī previous study in the journal Blood Advances from 2020 also affirmed this research, adding that people with Type O blood seem to be more protected from Covid. In 2020, scientists started talking about a link between blood type and Covid. Additional research has buttressed the possibility of a link.īut let's back up first. That link was established pretty early on in the pandemic and scientists didn't let it go. But the seemingly-banal detail might be a factor in who is most susceptible to Covid 19. In fact, most people don’t even know whether they’re Type A, B, AB, or O. Blood type doesn’t affect much in our daily lives.

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