European experts searching for the causes of the symptoms of Covid-19 disease among patients have revealed that the blood group and other genetic factors may be linked to the severity of the infection that causes the virus, Corona virus.
The results, published in the New England Journal of Medicine the day before yesterday, indicate that blood type (A) owners are more likely than others to contract HIV and face more severe symptoms.
During the height of the epidemic in Europe, the researchers analyzed the genes of more than 4,000 people, looking for common factors among people living with the virus who had severe symptoms of Covid-19 disease.
The researchers discovered a common set of variants in genes linked to the immune system response among individuals who had severe symptoms of Covid-19. These genes have also been linked to a protein on the surface of cells called "ACE2" that the virus uses to enter and infected cells in the body.
The researchers, led by Dr. Andre Francke of Christian-Albrecht University in Kiel, Germany, and Dr. Tom Carlsen of the University Hospital of Oslo in Norway, found a relationship between the severity of the disease and the blood type.
The risk of developing severe symptoms of Covid-19 was 45 percent higher among those with blood type "A" compared to other families. The risk was less than 35 percent for the "or" family.
"The results ... provide specific evidence regarding the pathological symptoms that may appear in severe cases of Covid-19," Carlsen told Reuters in an email, but he indicated the need for additional research to achieve benefit from those results.