The association of ABO blood group with the asymptomatic COVID-19 cases in India

Singh, Prajjval Pratap; Srivastava, Abhishek K.; Upadhyay, Sudhir K.; Singh, Ashish; Upadhyay, Shashank; Kumar, Pradeep; Rai, Vandana; Shrivastava, Pankaj; Chaubey, Gyaneshwer

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in multiple waves of infection worldwide. The large variations in case fatality ratio among different geographical regions suggest that the human susceptibility against this virus varies substantially. Several studies from different parts of the world showed a significant association of ABO blood group and COVID-19 susceptibility. It was demonstrated that individuals with blood group O are at the lower risk of coronavirus infection. To establish the association of ABO blood group in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility, we for the first time analysed SARS-CoV-2 neutralising antibodies among 509 individuals, collected from three major districts of Eastern Uttar Pradesh region of India. Interestingly, we found neutralising antibodies in significantly higher percentage of people with blood group AB (0.36) followed by B (0.31), A (0.22) and lowest in people with blood group O (0.11). We further estimated that people with blood group AB are at comparatively higher risk of infection than other blood groups. Thus, among the asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 recovered people blood group AB has highest, whilst individuals with blood group O has lowest risk of infection.