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Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern?
Among the many aspects that characterize the COVID-19 pandemic, two seem particularly challenging to understand: i) the great geographical differences in the degree of virus contagiousness and lethality that were found in the different phases of the epidemic progression, and, ii) the potential role...
Autores principales: | , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
Public Library of Science
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8118288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33984040 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251535 |
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author | Miotto, Mattia Di Rienzo, Lorenzo Gosti, Giorgio Milanetti, Edoardo Ruocco, Giancarlo |
author_facet | Miotto, Mattia Di Rienzo, Lorenzo Gosti, Giorgio Milanetti, Edoardo Ruocco, Giancarlo |
author_sort | Miotto, Mattia |
collection | PubMed |
description | Among the many aspects that characterize the COVID-19 pandemic, two seem particularly challenging to understand: i) the great geographical differences in the degree of virus contagiousness and lethality that were found in the different phases of the epidemic progression, and, ii) the potential role of the infected people’s blood type in both the virus infectivity and the progression of the disease. A recent hypothesis could shed some light on both aspects. Specifically, it has been proposed that, in the subject-to-subject transfer, SARS-CoV-2 conserves on its capsid the erythrocytes’ antigens of the source subject. Thus these conserved antigens can potentially cause an immune reaction in a receiving subject that has previously acquired specific antibodies for the source subject antigens. This hypothesis implies a blood type-dependent infection rate. The strong geographical dependence of the blood type distribution could be, therefore, one of the factors at the origin of the observed heterogeneity in the epidemics spread. Here, we present an epidemiological deterministic model where the infection rules based on blood types are taken into account, and we compare our model outcomes with the exiting worldwide infection progression data. We found an overall good agreement, which strengthens the hypothesis that blood types do play a role in the COVID-19 infection. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8118288 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81182882021-05-24 Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern? Miotto, Mattia Di Rienzo, Lorenzo Gosti, Giorgio Milanetti, Edoardo Ruocco, Giancarlo PLoS One Research Article Among the many aspects that characterize the COVID-19 pandemic, two seem particularly challenging to understand: i) the great geographical differences in the degree of virus contagiousness and lethality that were found in the different phases of the epidemic progression, and, ii) the potential role of the infected people’s blood type in both the virus infectivity and the progression of the disease. A recent hypothesis could shed some light on both aspects. Specifically, it has been proposed that, in the subject-to-subject transfer, SARS-CoV-2 conserves on its capsid the erythrocytes’ antigens of the source subject. Thus these conserved antigens can potentially cause an immune reaction in a receiving subject that has previously acquired specific antibodies for the source subject antigens. This hypothesis implies a blood type-dependent infection rate. The strong geographical dependence of the blood type distribution could be, therefore, one of the factors at the origin of the observed heterogeneity in the epidemics spread. Here, we present an epidemiological deterministic model where the infection rules based on blood types are taken into account, and we compare our model outcomes with the exiting worldwide infection progression data. We found an overall good agreement, which strengthens the hypothesis that blood types do play a role in the COVID-19 infection. Public Library of Science 2021-05-13 /pmc/articles/PMC8118288/ /pubmed/33984040 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251535 Text en © 2021 Miotto et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Miotto, Mattia Di Rienzo, Lorenzo Gosti, Giorgio Milanetti, Edoardo Ruocco, Giancarlo Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern? |
title | Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern? |
title_full | Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern? |
title_fullStr | Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern? |
title_full_unstemmed | Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern? |
title_short | Does blood type affect the COVID-19 infection pattern? |
title_sort | does blood type affect the covid-19 infection pattern? |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8118288/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33984040 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251535 |
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