Researchers identify 13 genetic variations that can make you more susceptible to COVID-19
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- Researchers found thirteen parts of the genetic code linked to COVID-19 susceptibility.
- The scientists compared 500,000 genes from people who had COVID-19 and with 2 million who hadn't.
- Some gene regions are linked to the immune response and others to your lungs.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
Variations in at least 13 parts of the genetic code can make us more susceptible to COVID-19, an international research team has discovered.
The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, a collaboration of more than 3,000 scientists from 25 countries, found that variations in six regions of the genetic code were linked with severe COVID-19, and seven could make people more susceptible to catching the virus.
The researchers looked at 46 studies from 19 countries and compared the genetic code of about 50,000 people who had COVID-19 with 2 million people who hadn't. Those with COVID-19 were split into three groups based on severity of their disease.
Nine of the regions had a clear biological explanation - some linked to the immune response and others to lung biology.
One region is associated with lung cancer and interstitial lung disease, and another with the autoimmune conditions hypothyroidism and rheumatoid arthritis, the authors wrote in a paper published in Nature on Thursday.
Andrea Ganna, senior researcher at the Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland, who led the study, told Insider that "everyone talks about the virus genome but the human genome matters."
"Usually when performing genetic analysis, there's a lot of variation but it's not clear what the genes do so it's exciting to have plausible biological explanations for the differences observed," he said, adding that further work was needed.
Ganna said that the work included underrepresented countries such as Jordan, Iran, Latvia and Pakistan, which enabled the group to find genes linked with COVID-19 that they wouldn't have otherwise. For example, two of the genetic regions that the group identified occurred in less than 3% of the European population in the dataset, but 32% of the East Asia population in the dataset.
Ganna said that the group has now examined the genes of 125,000 people with COVID-19 and found 10 more variations in the genetic code linked with COVID-19, bringing the total to 23. One was the ACE-2 COVID-19 receptor, the part of the human cell that the virus binds to, he said.
This part of the group's research hasn't been scrutinized by experts in a peer-review.
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