Genetics and coronavirus
The severe course of COVID-19 disease is caused by features in two genetic sites
Marina Astvatsaturyan, Echo of Moscow
It is currently unclear why some people infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, are seriously ill, while others have moderate symptoms.
There is evidence that the role of chronic diseases, such as hypertension and diabetes, aggravates the development of severe acute respiratory syndrome. But it is also known that the reaction of the human body to viral infections can be caused by genes.
In early June, an article was posted on the medRxiv preprint server with the results of a large–scale study - genome-wide association search (GWAS), in which significant genetic variants were identified in two sites. One locus encodes a blood group, and the other, located on the 3rd chromosome and carrying many genes, causes respiratory failure, characteristic of the defeat of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the publication reports The Scientist.
A genome-wide association search was performed on 1,610 samples from patients with confirmed COVID-19 and 2,205 control samples from healthy people.
The authors of the study are a large team of scientists from various European scientific and medical organizations. Genome–wide association search is a statistically unbiased approach that allows identifying the relationship between gene variants and external manifestations, in particular, diseases.
A group of researchers collected, genotyped and analyzed samples of 775 patients and 950 healthy people from Spain and 835 patients and 1,255 control group people from Italy. All patients were hospitalized and needed respiratory support due to respiratory failure, and they were identified with two genomic sites containing gene variants not found in people of the same geographical region, but not hospitalized.
Analysis of the first site, which encodes the blood group, showed that people with blood group A are at high risk of developing respiratory failure, whereas the zero blood group appears to be protective. The probability of hospitalization with acute respiratory syndromes in the case of group A blood is one and a half times higher than in the case of blood of other groups.
The second identified genomic site on the 3rd chromosome encodes several genes important for the development of the disease, in particular, an amino acid transporter protein that binds to the ACE2 receptor, through which the SARS-CoV-2 virus enters human cells. Two other genes determine the effectiveness of T-lymphocyte mobilization in viral infection.
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