Do ABO and Rhesus Blood Groups Affect Susceptibility to, and Prognosis of Ebola Virus Infection?

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For those of you who do not feel like accessing the PDF file, here are the main parts from the study referring to the connection between the Ebola virus and rh negative blood:

The results show that the disparities in the blood group profiles of the general population, infected patients, survivors and deceased are marked enough to infer that ABO and Rhesus blood groups could be a factor in the infection and survival of Ebola Virus Disease (EVD).

Our study however, suggests that in Ebola it is not so much a higher infection rate of Blood Group O, but rather a greater resistance of blood group A especially, and possibly negative rhesus generally.

Figure 4: The small number of 11 in the deceased group could explain
why we have no negative rhesus. There is some degree of artifact
introduced by the population size but the very high percentage of O
deaths, coupled with low percentage of A deaths are consistent with the
results for infected and survivors. There were no Rhesus negatives in
the deceased group.

Figure 2: The relative percentages of the different blood groups in infected
patients under treatment shows a significant decrease in the percentage
of A, (a 52.6% drop) and an increase in the percentage of B of 48%. The
increase in O could be considered insignificant. The fact that we have
no rhesus negatives in itself may be significant, but could be an artifact
from the small numbers. It is worthy of mention that Population distribution
with 5.6% Rhesus negative10 should yield a rhesus negative for every
17 patients approximately. In a patient population of 40 we would expect
to see at least one negative. There were no Rhesus negatives in the
patient group.

Figure 3: The blood group distribution of Survivors shows that the A
blood group is very close behind O in dominance, pointing to the high
survival of this blood group. Blood group B generally, has been reduced
from 22.3% in the general population to just 16.88%. The Rhesus
negative is some 30% below the expected of 5.6%.

Conclusions:

The results indicate that persons with blood group A get infected less and survive more in the event of Ebola exposure. It appears that persons with blood group B get infected more and survive less in the event of Ebola exposure. The seemingly high death rate of infected with blood Group O is an artifact produced by the apparent lower susceptibility to, and better prognosis of blood group A of Ebola infection. It also appears though difficult to conclude due to the low numbers that persons with negative Rhesus group generally are infected less and survive more than those with a positive Rhesus group in the event of Ebola exposure, particularly if they are of blood group A.

Further studies are necessary in order to conclude a causal association between the rhesus negative blood factor and possible resistance to the Ebola virus.