DNA Linked to Covid-19 Was Inherited From Neanderthals, Study Finds

[Elderberry]

NY Times by Carl Zimmer 7/4/2020

The stretch of six genes seems to increase the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus.

A stretch of DNA linked to Covid-19 was passed down from Neanderthals 60,000 years ago, according to a new study.

Scientists don’t yet know why this particular segment increases the risk of severe illness from the coronavirus. But the new findings, which were posted online on Friday and have not yet been published in a scientific journal, show how some clues to modern health stem from ancient history.

“This interbreeding effect that happened 60,000 years ago is still having an impact today,” said Joshua Akey, a geneticist at Princeton University who was not involved in the new study.

This piece of the genome, which spans six genes on Chromosome 3, has had a puzzling journey through human history, the study found. The variant is now common in Bangladesh, where 63 percent of people carry at least one copy. Across all of South Asia, almost one-third of people have inherited the segment.

Elsewhere, however, the segment is far less common. Only 8 percent of Europeans carry it, and just 4 percent have it in East Asia. It is almost completely absent in Africa.

More: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/04/health/coronavirus-neanderthals.html

[Elderberry]

The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals

Biorxiv by Hugo Zeberg, Svante Pääbo 7/3/2020

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.07.03.186296v1.full

Abstract

A recent genetic association study (Ellinghaus et al. 2020) identified a gene cluster on chromosome 3 as a risk locus for respiratory failure in SARS-CoV-2. Recent data comprising 3,199 hospitalized COVID-19 patients and controls reproduce this and find that it is the major genetic risk factor for severe SARS-CoV-2 infection and hospitalization (COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative). Here, we show that the risk is conferred by a genomic segment of ~50 kb that is inherited from Neandertals and occurs at a frequency of ~30% in south Asia and ~8% in Europe.

Main Text

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An early study (Ellinghaus et al. 2020) identified two genomic regions associated with severe COVID-19: one region on chromosome 3 containing six genes and one region on chromosome 9 that determines the ABO blood group. A recently released dataset from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative finds that the region on chromosome 3 is the only region significantly associated with severe COVID-19 at the genome-wide level (Fig. 1A) while the signal from the region determining ABO-blood group is not replicated (The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative 2020).

More at link.

[DB]

Do any other corona virus strains have such high genetic selectivity in humans?

Or is this a one-off lab experiment to see if specific genetic groups can be targeted?

[jmyrlefuller]

Interesting.

Here in my home county, a grand total of five people have died of the coronavirus, out of almost 100 confirmed cases in the past four months. But four of those cases were on the Indian reservation, and three of those four were members of the same family. (In other words, only one other county resident out of over 90 died.)

There have been multiple news reports of the virus spreading rampantly through family gatherings with severe effects (even though that isn't always the norm). That would certainly imply some sort of genetic predisposition or weakness.

It also raises the possibility that becoming a "superspreader," one of the one-sixth of all positive cases who spreads the disease like wildfire, might also be genetically linked.