It turned out what the protected from the coronavirus group blood

Chinese scientists have confirmed that blood group affects people’s vulnerability to the coronavirus. The most vulnerable were the patients with the II blood group and the most stable — I group. Preprint with the results of scientific work published in the repository medRxiv.

Experts have compared the distribution of the different blood groups system AB0 from 2173 patients with COVID-19 from three hospitals in Wuhan and Shenzhen with distribution of blood groups in healthy people living in these regions. Among healthy people, the share of groups A, B, AB and 0 are 32.16, 24.90, 9.10 and 33.84% respectively, and for patients — 37.75, 26.42, 10.03 and 25.80 percent respectively. So people with a band And 1.2 times more likely to develop a coronavirus infection, and people with group 0 — 1.3 times less. Age and gender it does not affect the distribution.

The blood group on AB0 system are determined by the presence of genes A, b, 0 and so on, which encode different variants of the enzyme glycosyltransferase. She glycosylase (attaches the remnants of sugars) to a surface antigen of the erythrocyte — agglutinogen, creating specific agglutinogen A or B. In plasma could contain antibodies (α-, β-hemagglutinin) to antigens, which can cause agglutination of red blood cells, however, a person may present only one protein of each pair of agglutinogen A/α-hemagglutinin and agglutinogen In/β-hemagglutinin. This creates four possible combinations: 0 (blood group I) And (II), (III) and AB (IV).