Evidence that blood type plays a role in COVID-19 | Hacker News Reader

Evidence that blood type plays a role in COVID-19

blog.23andme.com

48 pointsmolecule55 comments

It looks like they have found a stastically significant correlation with a very small effect size, using an extremely simple regression model adjusting for only a handful of covariates, looking across, presumably, tens of thousands or maybe even hundreds of thousands of SNPs.

It seems highly irresponsible to title such a study in a way implying a mechanistic or causal link. I expected to find a whole lot of discussion in the post about all the other evidence supporting it, but nope - they shoved their data into a stats package, and put the result straight into a blog post with a misleading title. They don't even discuss if they adjusted for multiple testing.

There's peer reviewed science, then there are pre-prints pending review. This is far far below either of those.

As long as your performance in the Social Media Metrics driven arms race for Attention increasingly determines what funding/employees/clients you attract, this kind of behavior will continue and escalate.

Maybe the title for this post has been changed but when I read it, and read the PR, they are both very cautious to just note that this Evidence For, not Proof Of, or, mechanism or causality.

Hot damn, I may be > 400 lbs but I'm taking Vitamin D, Zinc, AND have o-positive. I also wear masks everywhere, cause I'm not stupid. I'll let you know if I survive.

Before the lectures about 'have you tried losing weight', I was 690 in 2012, so yeah, it's just a SLOW burn, not a fast overnight thing, still going down, just slow and about 80 lbs is skin that needs removed and I just haven't been able to afford that surgery yet and was wanting to get lower still first anyways.

W/ covid here, seems not the best time for electives anyways.

Congratulations. 690 lbs to nearly 400 lbs is an incredible amount of weight loss. Well done.

Thanks, I had VSG which helped, but got stuck at 510, then crossfit + switching to diet soda got me down to 420 where I'm floating now... Need to go back to crossfit when covid is over w/...

holy snapping duck shit, you're a big dude and that amount of loss is amazing!

I was pretty please with 12kg over 6 months but hooly dooly, those stats are impressive!

seriously, you can do that you can do anything.

I lost 100 about 2 years ago by rededicating, and doing crossfit, been a bit lazy past year so kinda just stagnating then dieting a month or so if I gain some so I at least don't go up...

Was gonna go back to crossfit in March, but covid hit lol.

That's really impressive weight loss! Just keep pushing weights and exercise, it will zip that skin right up even if it takes quite a while.

And here I am at <70kg/150 pounds (@1.95m tall) and have more or less given up trying to gain weight.

The amount of happiness to be gained if only we could trade such character traits...

Take up a competitive endurance sport like running or better, if you have access to hills, cycling, you'll start to love that low weight of yours.

Yes, have done the Alps on a bike and enjoyed it quite a bit.

Hi, fellow lanky dude here. I blame everything on having a shitty appetite.

It's a slight struggle to maintain 77kg at 190cm. What have you been trying? I used to think nothing works, but they do say to keep a food (intake) and exercise journal so you hold yourself accountable.

I do have a small frame (thin wrists, smaller bones, etc) so I suspect my biology wants me to stay at like 75kg.

You’ll love the low weight when you get older. My 60+ parents say their peers from university, even many who were really fit but with higher weight, struggle a lot with their mobility at higher age.

It looks like a curse due to current body ideals, but it’s probably a blessing.

Underweight elderly people also struggle with mobility. Muscle atrophy and loss of bone mineral density causes falls and fractures. They often break a hip and are then stuck in a bed for weeks, which triggers an accelerating downward spiral.

Did you ever do barbell lifts + GOMAD?

If you can sustain that without gaining muscle or fat, I would suspect some sort of medical issue.

(I wouldn’t recommend GOMAD to most people. Even in your case, barbells + massive amounts of food would be my primary suggestion. However, I wouldn’t start immediately, as the whole gym/train/mer/physio system is mostly down or inadvisable from covid. You can hurt yourself with barbells)

I’m 6’2” and weighed about 150 lbs. last year. Now I weigh 180 lbs. and I attribute the weight gain almost exclusively to eating the number of calories I actually was supposed to (chronic under-eater before). It sucked at first, shoveling all the food I could in... but now I’ve tapered off and have maintained 180 for the last twelve months or so with relative ease. You just gotta EAT.

Good for you, keep it up!

You had almost 2 of me reduced in weight from your body. That's an incredible achievement. Keep it up! And stay safe.

Oh boy how I envy you, those five pounds I need to make that ratio exact are the hardest of my life.

"I'm taking Vitamin D, Zinc"

Why aren't governments promoting this? For most people it is relatively easy to get and it is already proven to have benefits. You can still get Covid-19 but it reduces the effects significantly. It is also safe to take but you should not overdose (especially with zinc).

As far as I know we only have observed correlation, and didn't do any studies to show causation.

As someone w/ a very deep D Deficiency, it can't hurt and may benefit, having o-positive blood is also a plus, so I guess we'll see as I'm sure I'll catch it someday. It's starting to explode here in Utah lately.... we went from 100/day avg to 560 last friday in new cases.

Most people who do not spend much time out of doors in sunshine should take vitamin D3 supplements according to my doctor. Especially in the winter in high latitudes. As far as I can tell this is standard national health service advice here in Norway, so some governments are promoting it but not specifically for COVID-19.

being careful with Zinc is VERY important.

I was in the Royal Free in the UK (for a Kidney transplant) and the guy next to me had over done Zinc and had completely shut is kidney function down due to complications with other prescribed medication!

Yes I believe too much zinc reduces copper intake.

I've been doing 50mg, but not religious/daily probably remembering 3-4 days per week... Vitamin D is daily though as my surgery I had causes some vitamin deficiency and I'm VERY D deficient.

It's not a 'proven' but a lot of 'talk' and studies, but I'm D deficient anyways, so it can't hurt me, and if I live through covid infection, well even better :) At least it's something I can do to feel 'productive' for my health and maybe it's just a placebo but sometimes those actually work themselves - to protect from severe outcomes with illness.

Isn't wearing a mask more for the benefit of those around you if you're asymptomatic? I thought most masks didn't do anything to prevent you from catching coronavirus, only spreading it.

I heard it decreases your likelihood like maybe 10-20%, but I'd imagine viral load goes way down compared to if you're not wearing one, so that could possibly have a better outcome from wearing one vs not wearing one... Imagine if healthcare workers just said fuck it and wore no PPE's how much sicker and faster would we start losing med workers?

A group of hospital researchers in Europe published a preprint with similar findings.[1] It has received recent coverage in the New York Times.[2]

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.31.20114991v...

[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/health/coronavirus-blood-...

It is good to remember when seeing a study showing a link between blood-type and some outcome: blood-type itself means very little biologically (it is one largely irrelevant gene among tens of thousands), but blood-type is heavily correlated with ancestry/race, which is heavily correlated with income/class, which is heavily correlated with lotsa stuff. When you see a blood-type effect, you are usually seeing a race effect or a class effect. It looks like this study tries to correct for "race [and] ethnicity", but not income. Even when you try to correct for these things, you can often still end up with a residual effect.

Are there any studies which show a correlation between blood type and income?

That is very old news, this is from March 11:

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.11.20031096v...

Type A is: 32% in the population 38% of those infected 41% of those that die.

Type O is: 34% in the population 26% of those infected 25% of those that die.

The article does reference that Chinese study, as well as a more recent one from researchers in Italy and Spain. It is great to see the scientific process at work — building evidence for a phenomenon. It also underscores one of the biggest benefits of preprints: faster dissemination of information.

Am I missing this or the % in the 23aM page are not considering the proportion of the different types in the population?

Also given that there seems to be an important coagulation component in the disease, this can make sense.

But interesting enough, this is not too obvious. Because O type blood has both Anti-A and Anti-B antibodies, so if there was something in the virus that looks like the A or B antigen this would make sense, but it's the opposite.

>Although one study found the blood group O only to be protective across rhesus positive blood types, differences in rhesus factor (blood type + or -) were not significant in 23andMe data. Nor was this a factor in susceptibility or severity in cases.

I'm O -ve and everyone else in my family are O +ve. Going by the rate of infections in my state, I'm of opinion that it's just matter of when and not if we'll get infected by COVID-19.

So, I'll update my data here when that happens.

This is a PR blog, of a private company, publishing "first blush" of "preliminary data".

While any contribution to knowledge is warranted, this should not be circulating.

What is the reason that nearly everybody refers to Covid-19 as the name of the virus, instead using SARS-Cov-2?

In the study they even refer to 'genetically studying covid' which does mean the disease caused by the virus, but I would assume one would study the virus genetically instead?

SEO is the reason. Most people are unaware that Covid is caused by a SARS variant, or that the underlying virus even has a different name.

Or maybe covid is simpler than SA... ah can't remember never mind.

Because having two unrelated names, one for the disease and another for the virus just confuses matters during layman discussion.

OTOH it makes it easy to detect layman discussions.

It seems that they're inferring the blood type from the ABO gene, although displaying this on the web site is a "sunsetted feature." Edit: the rhesus factor, on the other hand, seems to have been self reported.

Interesting.... But am I the only one who recalls seeing multiple articles stating that they suspect type A to be the most susceptible? It's curious because due to this study's findings it would appear that while type O fairs the the best, type A has slightly better chances compared to type B and type AB. So in other words type A is the second most resistant? Am I interpreting that right?

Type A is wayyy more common than B or AB, at least in the US (and I think Europe?). Not sure about other regions. That could distort the effect, which looks to be fairly minor in the first place.

Not surprising. Serious COVID-19 cases frequently have blood clotting problems. Previous research on other diseases found that Type O blood is correlated with a lower risk of blood clots.

https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/ATVBAHA.119.313658

This was already known in April. But a Chinese study so nobody bothered. Two weeks later confirmed by a New Yorker hospital.

https://www.pharmacytimes.com/news/study-suggests-blood-type...

[old news]

This is now the confirmation study of both.

Wikipedia suggests great shifts in blood type between both nationality and ethnicity. Can’t see any mention of the latter on that page.

How do people know their blood type? I've never had a situation in life where someone has told me it.

They usually tell you when you donate blood, though I always forget within a week...

I needed to find it out to get a work permit in Asia, of all the weird things

Whenever you have any sort of blood test, you can ask them to include the type test. Sometimes they even do it, without even asking, because it is such a valuable test.

In case of an accident, you might need a blood transfusion fast, and that delay to determine your blood type can be the difference between life and death.

What happen with people have O+ blood group

Very clickbaity title.

I remember Chinese researchers published about blood types in relation to Covid19 months ago.

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