Here is the revised version from July 21st, 2020 of a study I have recently posted. Thank you to Paul for sharing it in a comment here. Here are some highlights regarding Rh negative blood and COVID-19 alongside brief comments of mine:
Using observational data on 7,770 SARS-CoV-2-tested individuals at New York Presbyterian (NYP) hospital, we find evidence of overall association with ABO blood groups and a beneficial association between Rh-negative blood groups and both infection status and death.
I am happy to see that in this version, the obvious is being focused on which didn’t happen in the previous one.
Finally, we show that blood type’s effects are not explained by other risk factors (age, sex, race, ethnicity, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, obesity, and cardiovascular and respiratory diseases). To our knowledge, this is the first report of an independent Rh(D) association with COVID-19.
This is what I have been waiting for.
Since there were few AB-negative individuals tested for SARS-CoV-2 infection, we excluded AB-negative from all ABO/Rh analyses.
Also, great move. Sure enough, the initial version prompted some people to assume that AB negatives were immune which couldn’t be further from the truth.
While Rh(D) information was not available from the other meta-analysis sites, we found consistent evidence for protective associations between Rh negative blood groups and SARS-CoV-2 infection and death in NYP/CUIMC data. Negative Rh blood groups are less common, representing only 9% of individuals in our data, and Rh group associations were consistently moderated by adjustment for covariates (Figure 1), suggesting the potential for confounding due to population stratification or selection bias. Further work is needed to better understand the associations between Rh(D) blood groups and COVID-19.
This particular part I have made several posts and videos about and I am happy they spell it out. Hopefully, more studies will arise and in light of the situation we are in, more efforts will be made to determine the nature of how Rh negatives might enjoy some form of protective associations.
Here are more of my personal comments and why this revision is so significant to me:
This was my post when the first edition came out:
This newer study appears to confirm what’s been indicated about blood type O and Rh negative blood groups: