PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Hugo Zeberg
AU  - Svante Pääbo
TI  - The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals
AID  - 10.1101/2020.07.03.186296
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.07.03.186296
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/03/2020.07.03.186296.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/03/2020.07.03.186296.full
AB  - 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.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.