The major genetic risk factor for severe COVID-19 does not show any association among South Asian populations

Abstract

Abstract With the growing evidence on the variable human susceptibility against COVID-19, it is evident that some genetic loci modulate the severity of the infection. Recent studies have identified several loci associated with greater severity. More recently, a study has identified a 50 kb genomic segment introgressed from Neanderthal adding a risk for COVID-19, and this genomic segment is present among 16% and 50% people of European and South Asian descent, respectively. Our studies on ACE2 identified a haplotype present among 20% and 60% of European and South Asian populations, respectively, which appears to be responsible for the low case fatality rate among South Asian populations. This result was also consistent with the real-time infection rate and case fatality rate among various states of India. We readdressed this issue using both of the contrasting datasets and compared them with the real-time infection rates and case fatality rate in India. We found that the polymorphism present in the 50 kb introgressed genomic segment (rs10490770) did not show any significant correlation with the infection and case fatality rate in India.