Scientists have found 13 places in the human genome that may influence our susceptibility to a coronavirus infection or risk of severe COVID-19.
For every confirmed coronavirus infection in the U.S. during the spring and summer of 2020, 4.8 other cases went undetected, a new study finds.infectious diseases are fairly rare compared to those of other diseases with a complex genetic basis. That’s largely because scientists tend to study the microbe causing the disease rather than the host being infected, said Asgari, who co-wrote a commentary that Nature published with the findings.
On top of that, the effects of genetic variation are typically pretty small when weighed against factors such as age or access to healthcare. This means that researchers would have to put together studies with tens of thousands of participants — if not more — whose characteristics are well-known in order to detect a subtle genetic link. And they’d have to do it fast, in the short period when an infection is still triggering symptoms.
To overcome these challenges, scientists from around the world joined forces early in the pandemic to create the Their collaboration grew to include more than 3,000 researchers and clinicians who combined data from 46 studies involving a total of 49,562 people from 19 countries who had COVID-19, and 2 million others without the disease who served as controls.Along with subjects’ genetic information, they gathered key metrics, such as age and sex, that can play a role in disease severity.
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