Certain gene variant reduces risk of death from Covid-19 by a third | Science

The study examined the disease course of 1,570 patients who tested positive for the coronavirus between March 11, 2020 and June 30, 2021. The results have been published in the scientific journal Frontiers in Genetics. The variant is ‘GNB3 TT’. About 10 percent of the population of Europe carries this variant.

“GNB3 is a gene that codes for an important functional subunit of the so-called G proteins,” explains Birte Möhlendick as author of the study. “Our research group has already been able to demonstrate in its own preparatory work that the gene variant leads to an activation of immune cells.”

An early and adequate immune response plays an important role in the course of Covid-19. “In this study, we therefore looked on the one hand to see whether patients with a markedly severe disease course have different immune responses and whether the gene variant in GNB3 is responsible for this,” says the scientist at the Institute of Pharmacogenetics.

205 of the study participants (13 pc) had a mild disease course, 760 (48 pc) were hospitalized and 292 (19 pc) in intensive care. 313 people (20 pc) died.

“We were able to show that the cells of the people with the GNB3 TT genotype responded most strongly to the coronavirus. That may explain why the risk of death is so much lower for them,” says Möhlendick. Because the study only ran until June 2021, the omikron variant has not yet been investigated.

Previous studies have already shown that genes can play a role in corona. For example, people with a different gene variant are three times more likely to need artificial respiration, a team at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig discovered in 2020. The blood type also influences how easily someone gets corona and how seriously ill someone is. he or she becomes.