RT Journal Article
SR Electronic
T1 The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals
JF bioRxiv
FD Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
SP 2020.07.03.186296
DO 10.1101/2020.07.03.186296
A1 Hugo Zeberg
A1 Svante Pääbo
YR 2020
UL http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/07/03/2020.07.03.186296.abstract
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.