Could some people be genetically resistant to COVID-19?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-10-19 02:00

Australia; International; VIC

Some people may be born with resistance to COVID-19 and understanding the genes involved could help us better understand COVID-19 infections and could help us develop drugs to prevent infection in others, according to Australian and international experts. They say scientists have found genes that give people natural resistance to other infections including HIV and noroviruses, and this points to the idea that there may also be people resistant to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. They say evidence already suggests people with O type blood groups may be slightly more resistant, and a number of other candidate genes have already been identified.

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Journal/
conference: Nature Immunology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The University of Melbourne, Biomedical Research Foundation of the Academy of Athens, Greece

Funder: The Laboratory of Human Genetics of Infectious Diseases is supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (R01AI088364), the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS), NIH Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA) program (UL1TR001866), a Fast Grant from Emergent Ventures, Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the Yale Center for Mendelian Genomics and the GSP Coordinating Center funded by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) (UM1HG006504 and U24HG008956), the Fisher Center for Alzheimer’s Research Foundation, the Meyer Foundation, the French National Research Agency (ANR) under the Investments for the Future program (ANR-10-IAHU-01), the Integrative Biology of Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratory of Excellence (ANR-10-LABX-62-IBEID), the French Foundation for Medical Research (FRM) (EQU201903007798), the FRM and ANR GENCOVID project (ANR-20-COVI-0003), ANRS-COV05, the Fondation du Souffle, the Square Foundation, Grandir - Fonds de solidarité pour l’enfance, the SCOR Corporate Foundation for Science, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Rockefeller University, the St. Giles Foundation, Institut National de la Santé et de la Recherche Médicale (INSERM), and the University of Paris. E.A. is supported by research grants from the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (IMMUNAID, grant no. 779295, CURE, grant no. 767015 and TO_AITION grant no. 848146) and the Hellenic Foundation for Research and Innovation (INTERFLU, no. 1574). C.O.F. is supported in part by the Science Foundation Ireland COVID-19 Program. G.N. is supported by a grant awarded to Regione Lazio (Research Group Projects 2020) no. A0375-2020-36663, GecoBiomark. A.P. is supported in part by the Horizon 2020 program under grant no. 824110 (EasiGenomics grant no. COVID-19/PID12342) and the CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya. H.S. is supported in part by the Intramural Research Program of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health. A.S. is supported in part by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant no. 789645).

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