Who risks more with Covid? On Nature one of the largest genomic analysis studies- breaking latest news

They went out on Nature the results of one of the largest genome-level association studies ever performed, which includes almost 50 thousand Covid patients and two million controls on non-infected subjects. The question he had to answer was which genetic factors influence why some patients develop serious diseases and life-threatening, while other coronavirus positives “get away with” mild symptoms or are even asymptomatic?

Research results

A full summary of the results reveals 13 “loci”, places in the human genome, which are strongly associated with severe Covid infections. Of the 13 loci identified so far by the team, two had higher frequencies among patients of East Asian or South Asian origin than those of European origin. One of these two loci in particular, near the FOXP4 gene, is linked to lung cancer. The ‘FOXP4 variant’ associated with severe Covid increases gene expression, suggesting that inhibiting the gene could be a potential therapeutic strategy. Other loci included DPP9, a gene always involved in lung cancer and pulmonary fibrosis, and TYK2, which is implicated in some autoimmune diseases.
The researchers also identified, and confirmed, the importance of some causal factors dependent on lifestyle, such as smoking and high body mass index.
The findings could help provide goals for future therapies. Currently there are no targeted therapies on infection, apart from monoclonal antibodies (we talked about it WHO).

The birth of the project

The idea of ​​the research started in March 2020 by Andrea Ganna, group leader at theInstitute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM) of the University of Helsinki and Mark Daly, director of FIMM and member of the institute at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard of Boston, Massachusetts. The project, which took the name of COVID-19 Host Genomics Initiative, has grown to be one of the most extensive collaborations in human genetics and currently encompasses beyond 3,500 authors and 61 studies from 25 countries, including Italy: in the Milan area, in addition to Humanitas, attended theUniversity of Milan and the University of Milan Bicocca. “The better we manage to treat Covid, the more the medical community will be able to manage the disease and its impact on society. To this end, the global consortium made the collected data immediately available to the scientific community, in order to speed up research by other scientists as much as possible. The aim is to discover therapeutic strategies that allow, thanks to the contribution of genetics in understanding the molecular mechanisms of the disease, to use existing drugs that could quickly lead to new therapies “, explains Professor Rosanna Asselta, Professor of Medical Genetics at Humanitas University, which coordinated the contribution of Humanitas.