Is Your Blood Type Raising Your Risk of COVID-19?

As you’re likely aware, the first cases of the now seemingly ubiquitous Covid-19 virus appeared in Wuhan, China. Throughout several months, the virus consumed the city and the entire Hubei province, killing over 3,000 people and urging a complete lockdown. As tragic as the reality of Wuhan is, it is there that scientists have learned much about the virus - its symptoms and behavior, which ultimately helped other countries prepare to face the dangerous virus.

Recently, researchers from the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, China, published a preprint article online suggesting they may have found another piece of the puzzle, a piece that can help isolate those who are at a greater risk of developing a severe form of COVID-19, and that piece is blood type. The article made quite a lot of buzz online, and we'll examine what it does and doesn't tell you about the link between blood type and the Coronavirus.

How Is COVID-19 Correlated with Blood Types?

The study examined a total of 2,173 people hospitalized due to a SARS-CoV-2 infection in Wuhan and Shenzhen, focusing on the blood type distribution of the patients. The researchers then compared the data with the distribution of blood types in Wuhan in the general population.

The results revealed people with type A blood were hospitalized with COVID-19 more, and also that patients with blood type O were significantly less likely to be hospitalized due to the Coronavirus. No difference between the patients and the general population was found for B and AB blood types.

As a result, the researchers concluded that those with blood type A are at a higher risk of developing a serious case of COVID-19, and people with blood type O are somewhat less likely to catch it and suffer its more serious symptoms.

Reservations about the Study

Keep in mind that the study only focused on those patients who were severely affected by the virus and required hospitalization, so the findings CANNOT confidently say that individuals with blood type A are more likely to get the disease and that those who have type O blood are somehow immune to the disease.

Another serious drawback of the study is that it only looked at the hospitalizations in Wuhan and Shenzhen - a very isolated population, and it would certainly be necessary to confirm that the same blood type patterns can also be found in populations across other geographical areas throughout the world.

While this is an interesting study in general, you shouldn’t take the correlation between blood type and Coronavirus risks at face value, at least not for now. As Sakthi Vaiyapuri, associate professor of cardiovascular and venom pharmacology at the University of Reading in the UK, pointed out in an interview with Medical News Today, “Without establishing causal links between [the coronavirus] and ABO blood group antigens, it’s difficult to understand this conclusion, which might be purely coincidental. Importantly, people should not panic about these results, as, clearly, further scientific research is required to substantiate these claims.” 

To sum everything up, as of now, at the end of March 2020, there is no certain causal link between blood type and the likelihood of developing complications as a result of a SARS-CoV-2 infection or being less likely to do so. Medical experts and epidemiologists maintain that we should all still follow the local quarantine rules in your area, maintain social distancing and proper hygiene.



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News Cutting 300 Calories In Your Daily Diet May Protect Heart And Cut Risk Of Diabetes: Study Cutting 300 Calories In Your Daily Diet May Protect Heart And Cut Risk Of Diabetes

Keeping a track of your calories may do wonders for your heart, weight and blood glucose levels. If the findings of a new study are to be believed, cutting only 300 calories a day may help cut risk of diabetes, cholesterol and heart disease. Even those who have a healthy BMI could benefit immensely, if they were to cut back a few extra calories from their diet, the study reveals. 

The trial, part of an ongoing project , suggested that it's not just weight loss that leads to these benefits but some more complex metabolic change triggered by eating fewer calories than what's expended.

"There's something about caloric restriction, some mechanism we don't yet understand that results in these improvements. We have collected blood, muscle and other samples from these participants and will continue to explore what this metabolic signal or magic molecule might be," said the study's lead author.

In the first month of trial, participants ate three meals a day that would cut one-fourth of their daily calories to help train them on the new diet. Participants were asked to maintain the 25 per cent calorie reduction for two years. However, the way they carried it out varied, with the average calorie reduction for all participants being about 12 per cent. Still, were able to sustain a 10 per cent drop in their weight, 71 per cent of which was fat.

There were numerous improvements in markers that measure the risk of metabolic disease. After two years, participants also showed a reduction in a biomarker that indicates chronic inflammation which has also been linked to heart disease, cancer, and cognitive decline.

"This shows that even a modification that is not as severe as what we used in this study could reduce the burden of diabetes and cardiovascular disease. People can do this fairly easily by simply watching their little indiscretions here and there, or maybe reducing the amount of them, like not snacking after dinner," said Kraus.

Low Calorie Foods: 

Here are some low-calorie foods you may include in your diet.

1. Strawberry

2. Cucumber

3. Celery

4. Watermelon

5. Lettuce

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MRI can be used to diagnose heart disease

Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) can be used to measure how the heart uses oxygen for both healthy patients and those with heart disease, a study has found.

Reduced blood flow to the heart muscle is the leading cause of death in the Western world, said researchers. Currently, the diagnostic tests available to measure blood flow to the heart require injection of radioactive chemicals or contrast agents that change the MRI signal and detect the presence of disease.

There are small but finite patients associated risks and it is not recommended for a variety of patients including those with poor kidney function. This new method, cardiac functional MRI ( cMRI), does not require needles or chemicals being injected into the body, said a researcher. It eliminates the existing risks and can be used on all patients, he said. Our discovery shows that we can use MRI to study heart muscle activity, he said.  have been successful in using a pre-clinical model and now we are preparing to show this can be used to accurately detect heart disease in patients,he said.

Repeat exposure to carbon-di-oxide is used to test how well the heart's blood vessels are working to deliver oxygen to the muscle. A breathing machine changes the concentration of carbon0di-oxide in the blood. This change should result in a change in blood flow to the heart, but does not happen when disease is present. The cMRI method reliably detects whether these changes are present. Other researchers have explored oxygenation-sensitive MRI but initial results contained a high level of noise with blurry images, Project leader, believed that the noise was actually variation in the heart's processing of oxygen.

He engineered a way to average this variation and through testing, the team discovered that the noise is actually a new way to study how the heart works. We've opened the door to a new era and totally novel way of doing cardiac stress testing to identify patients with ischemic heart disease, the researcher said.This approach overcomes the limitations of all in the current diagnostics-- there would no longer be a need for injections or physical stress testing like running or treadmills, he said.

Using MRI will not only be safer, than present methods, but also provide more detailed information and much earlier on in the disease process, he said. Following initial testing through clinical trials, he said the technique may be used with patients clinically within a few years. In addition to studying coronary artery disease, the method could be used in other cases where heart blood flow is affected such as the effects of a heart attack or damages to the heart during cancer treatment. Due to its minimal risk, the new tool could be safely used with the same patient multiple times to better select the right treatment and find out early on if it is working.

THIS IS ONLY FOR INFORMATION, ALWAYS CONSULT YOU PHYSICIAN BEFORE HAVING ANY PARTICULAR FOOD/ MEDICATION/EXERCISE/OTHER REMEDIES.                                    PS- THOSE INTERESTED IN RECIPES ARE FREE TO  VIEW MY BLOG-                                                                                           https://gseasyrecipes.blogspot.com/    

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Breastfeeding may lower the risk of uterine cancer: Study

A team of  researchers on Wednesday said that women who breastfeed their children are found to be at substantially lesser risk of developing uterine cancer.

Researchers  said that women who breastfed at least one child are at lower risk of contracting cancer of the uterus.

 The head of the Cancer Causes and Care research group  told  "We found that the longer women breast-fed each child, the more their risk of uterine cancer reduced, up until nine months when the reduction in risk plateaued."

For the study, the  team analysed data collected from over 26,000  women, with over 9,000 of those having uterine cancer.

She said,"We looked at the total amount of time these women had spent breastfeeding over the course of their lives."

She said,"We found that women who had ever breastfed had an 11 per cent lower risk of developing uterine cancer than women who had never breastfed."

Within the results was also an interesting correlation between the duration of the breastfeeding and subsequent lowering of the likelihood of contracting uterine cancer.

Women who breastfed for three to six months have a seven per cent less risk of the cancer, while women who breastfed for six to nine months have 11 per cent lower risk.

She said,"In other words, a woman who breastfed two children for nine months each had around a 22 per cent lower risk of uterine cancer than a woman who had never breastfed her children."

However, not every woman is able to breastfeed, and she said there are other things that women can do to lower the risk of endometrial, or uterine cancer.
 
The Dr. added, "Having a baby reduces your risk, similarly taking the oral contraceptive pill can reduce the risk of endometrial cancer; but probably the best thing to do is make sure you have a healthy lifestyle."

She said,"Eat well, avoid putting on weight, and exercise regularly, these are all key things to reduce the risk of uterine cancer."

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Less painful' treatment for enlarged prostates

Men with enlarged prostates can avail of a new, "less painful" treatment, research led by an Indian-origin physician has found.

The researchers treated men with benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH), a condition in which the prostate is enlarged but not cancerous.

The new interventional radiology treatment known as prostate artery embolisation (PAE) improved patient symptoms, regardless of the size of BPH, researchers found in a retrospective study.

"This innovative treatment offers less risk, less pain and less recovery time than traditional surgery, and we are hopeful that further research will confirm it to be an effective therapy for BPH," said lead researcher Sandeep Bagla, interventional radiologist at the Inova Alexandria Hospital in the US.

Bagla and his team examined the cases of 78 patients, who underwent prostate artery embolisation (a way of blocking abnormal blood vessels) for BPH as part of the clinicians' routine practice.

Patients were categorised into three different analysis groups based on the size of the enlarged prostate: less than 50 cubic centimetres, between 50-80 cubic centimetres and greater than 80 cubic centimetres.

The researchers evaluated the effectiveness of PAE in these patients at one, three and six months post treatment.

Ninety-six percent of cases (75 of 78) were considered technically successful, with both blood vessels leading to the enlarged prostate blocked by PAE treatment.

The researchers found improvement in symptoms and quality of life, as measured by the American Urological Association Symptom Index, in all three patient groups.

The findings were presented at the ongoing Society of Interventional Radiology's 40th Annual Scientific Meeting at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta.
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