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Genetics: Risk of severe COVID-19 in genomic segment inherited from Neanderthals

Introversion

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https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200707/Risk-of-severe-COVID-19-in-7e50-kb-genomic-segment-inherited-from-Neanderthals.aspx

News Medical said:
Researchers Hugo Zeberg from Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig, Germany and Svante Pääbo from Max Planck Institute and Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Onna-son, Japan, have found that a small fragment of the genetic code that has been inherited by modern humans from Neanderthals could carry the secret of why some people succumb to a severe form of COVID-19 requiring hospitalization, while others recover. Their study titled, “The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neanderthals,” was released online at the preprint review site bioRxiv*.

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has infected over 11.78 million individuals around the world and killed over 542,000 people to date. There seems to be no clear indication as to who would develop a more severe form of the infection and who would not require hospitalization. Some of the risk factors for severe disease that have been speculated include the presence of comorbid conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and male sex.

The researchers explained that a study by Ellinhaus and colleagues released earlier this year had shown that there is a genetic association among those hospitalized for COVID-19. A cluster of genes found on chromosome 3 was found to raise the risk of getting respiratory failure when infected with SARS-CoV-2. The team writes that these genetic variants include, “chr3: 45,859,651-45,909,024, hg19”.

The team of researchers explained that this particular genetic variant found on chromosome 3 has a low rate of recombination or change and has been handed down from our ancestors. They wrote that this genetic variant, or “haplotype,” “entered the human population by gene flow from Neandertals or Denisovans that occurred some 40,000 to 60,000 years ago.” The team explained that Ellinghaus and colleagues in their study had found that the odds ratio of having this haplotype and getting severe SARS-CoV-2 infection was 1.70 – which is significant. This study was conducted to see if this haplotype may have been handed down to modern humans from Neanderthals or Denisovans.

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MaeZe

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Well that's certainly an interesting discovery.

I wonder if 23 and Me or Ancestry dot com are testing anyone for Neanderthal gene segments? If I was rich, I'd have my whole genome mapped.
 
mccardey

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MaeZe said:
Well that's certainly an interesting discovery.

I wonder if 23 and Me or Ancestry dot com are testing anyone for Neanderthal gene segments?
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That's a terrifying thought, in terms of the potential social ramifications...
 
Roxxsmom

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23 and me does have a test for Neanderthal DNA, I believe. I know someone who had it done and found out he had X percentage of Neanderthal DNA. I don't think they differentiate between different Neanderthal haplotypes, however.

Most people of European and Asian descent have a little Neanderthal DNA.

I read an article about this the other day, and it was linked to the original paper. As it turns out these particular Neanderthal (or possibly Denisovan) genes are most likely to be found in people from Bangladesh, where 63% of people carry the variant! In south Asia, about 30% do, but in Europe and East Asia, far fewer have this variant (only about 8%). Almost no one from Africa does, unsurprisingly.

Are there data suggesting an unusually high percentage of people in Bangladesh are developing serious cases of Covid-19 with respiratory failure?
 
Brightdreamer

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Yes, the sibling did the 23 and Me test and they give the number of Neanderthal variants and the percentage (of total ancestry and compared to other customers), though I don't know that they name the specific variants.
 
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