Blood type susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 at a tertiary hospital in Accra, Ghana
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Pandemics from viral outbreaks, such as that caused by SARS-CoV-2, have significant impacts worldwide. The factors that underlie differential susceptibility to severe COVID-19 outcomes are not fully understood. The role of the ABO blood group in the outcome of SARS-CoV-2 infections remains to be clarified in different populations. This study described the SARS-CoV-2 seroprevalence and examined the association of the ABO blood group with COVID-19 disease among apparently healthy and COVID-19 patients at the Korle Bu Teaching Hospital, Accra. The study involved 277 participants comprising 200 healthy individuals and 77 PCR-confirmed COVID-19 patients with mild or severe symptoms. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody assay (IgM/IgG) was performed, and ABO blood grouping was done on plasma samples using the reverse blood grouping method. Statistical analyses were performed in R for the association of socio-demographic parameters and ABO blood groupings of participants with SARS-CoV-2 infection status. The total SARS-CoV-2 seropositivity was 61.4% (157/277). Most of the participants (245/277, 88.4%) were unvaccinated. Of the 245 unvaccinated individuals, 127 (51.8%) were IgG reactive. A significant association was observed between ABO blood group and COVID-19 disease status. Antigen A participants had a higher probability of symptomatic infection than non-antigen A individuals. Blood group O appeared more protective than other blood types among the participants. Seropositivity was high among the participants studied-vaccinated and unvaccinated. Blood group A is associated with an increased risk of COVID-19, whereas blood group O appears protective. Further studies involving larger sample sizes are required to confirm these findings. IMPORTANCE: The transmissibility and virulence of SARS-CoV-2 and the severity of COVID-19 disease appeared to vary across nations and among populations. However, the factors that account for the differential susceptibility and COVID-19 outcomes are not well understood. The roles of host immune defense mechanisms and genetic makeup have been implicated. This study investigated the seroprevalence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies (IgM and IgG) in apparently healthy individuals and COVID-19 patients; using a reliable but inexpensive blood group typing based on direct hemagglutination technique and rigorous statistical analyses, we determined the association of ABO blood groups with COVID-19 disease. We found appreciably high seropositivity among the participants studied-both vaccinated and unvaccinated-and showed that blood type significantly influences SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 severity, with blood group A associated with severe COVID-19 disease, whereas blood group O appears protective. Further studies involving a larger sample size are required to confirm these findings.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".