Scientific Reports (Sep 2024)

Genetic variants regulating the immune response improve the prediction of COVID-19 severity provided by clinical variables

  • Pablo Delgado-Wicke,
  • Sara Fernández de Córdoba-Oñate,
  • Emilia Roy-Vallejo,
  • Estíbaliz Alegría-Carrasco,
  • Diego A. Rodríguez-Serrano,
  • Amalia Lamana,
  • Nuria Montes,
  • Ana Nicolao-Gómez,
  • Rosa Carracedo-Rodríguez,
  • Ana Marcos-Jiménez,
  • Paula Díaz-Fernández,
  • José M. Galván-Román,
  • Laura Rabes-Rodríguez,
  • Marta Sanz-Alba,
  • Jesús Álvarez-Rodríguez,
  • Almudena Villa-Martí,
  • Carlos Rodríguez-Franco,
  • Gonzalo Villapalos-García,
  • Pablo Zubiaur,
  • Francisco Abad-Santos,
  • Ignacio de los Santos,
  • Rosa P. Gomariz,
  • Rosario García-Vicuña,
  • Cecilia Muñoz-Calleja,
  • Isidoro González-Álvaro,
  • Elena Fernández-Ruiz,
  • PREDINMUN-COVID Group

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-71476-2
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 1
pp. 1 – 10

Abstract

Read online

Abstract The characteristics of the host are crucial in the final outcome of COVID-19. Herein, the influence of genetic and clinical variants in COVID-19 severity was investigated in a total of 1350 patients. Twenty-one single nucleotide polymorphisms of genes involved in SARS-CoV-2 sensing as Toll-like-Receptor 7, antiviral immunity as the type I interferon signalling pathway (TYK2, STAT1, STAT4, OAS1, SOCS) and the vasoactive intestinal peptide and its receptors (VIP/VIPR1,2) were studied. To analyse the association between polymorphisms and severity, a model adjusted by age, sex and different comorbidities was generated by ordinal logistic regression. The genotypes rs8108236-AA (OR 0.12 [95% CI 0.02–0.53]; p = 0.007) and rs280519-AG (OR 0.74 [95% CI 0.56–0.99]; p = 0.03) in TYK2, and rs688136-CC (OR 0.7 [95% CI 0.5–0.99]; p = 0.046) in VIP, were associated with lower severity; in contrast, rs3853839-GG in TLR7 (OR 1.44 [95% CI 1.07–1.94]; p = 0.016), rs280500-AG (OR 1.33 [95% CI 0.97–1.82]; p = 0.078) in TYK2 and rs1131454-AA in OAS1 (OR 1.29 [95% CI 0.95–1.75]; p = 0.110) were associated with higher severity. Therefore, these variants could influence the risk of severe COVID-19.