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More than a year after the first cases of COVID-19 were detected, researchers are still trying to understand why some people infected with the virus become critically ill, while others have little to no symptoms. Scientists have turned to look at the genes of patients with severe COVID-19 to understand if their bodies mount an immune defense differently than healthy patients do. A genome-wide association study published in Nature on December 11 finds that variants of five key genes responsible for antiviral immunity and lung inflammation are associated with severe COVID-19.
The findings offer potential therapeutic targets to create an effective COVID-19 treatment. “Our results immediately highlight which drugs should be at the top of the list for clinical testing,” Kenneth Baillie, a consultant in critical care medicine and a senior research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, tells Reuters.
Baillie and his colleagues analyzed the DNA ...
