Genetic risk factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility in multiethnic populations

ABSTRACT

Susceptibility to infection from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), the virus that causes the disease COVID-19, may be understood more clearly by looking at genetic variants and their associations to susceptibility phenotype. I conducted a genome-wide association study of SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility in a multiethnic set of three populations (European, African, and South Asian) from a UK BioBank clinical and genomic dataset. I estimated associations between susceptibility phenotype and genotyped or imputed SNPs, adjusting for age at enrollment, sex, and the ten top principal components of ancestry. Three genome-wide significant loci and their top associated SNPs were discovered in the European ancestry population SLC6A20 in the chr3p21.31 locus (rs73062389-A;P=2.315 x 10-12), ABO on chromosome 9 (rs9411378-A;P=2.436 x 10-11) and LZTFL1 on chromosome 3 (rs73062394;P=4.4 x 10-11);these SNPs were not found to be significant in the African and South Asian populations. A multiethnic GWAS may help elucidate further insights into SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility.