ABSTRACT
The corona virus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has affected most of the world with varying degrees of morbidity and mortality. The presence of genetic polymorphisms may be associated with the severity and outcome of COVID-19 infection. This work aimed to evaluate the genetic polymorphisms of interleukin (IL-6) and IL-10 genes with the outcome of COVID-19 infection. This cross-sectional study was conducted on 354 patients who were classified into moderate and severe cases (including alive and deceased cases). All individuals were genotyped for one SNP for IL-6 (rs1800795) and one SNP for IL10 (rs1800896) using allelic discrimination real-time PCR technique. In this study, 198 cases were moderate, and 156 cases were severe. The risk of allele carriage of the minor allele of IL-6 rs1800795 (C) was significantly higher among the severe group when compared with that of the moderate group (p < 0.0001), while there was a mild significant difference of same allele carriage among alive cases when compared to that of deceased one (p < 0.04). Furthermore, the risk of the C allele of IL-10 rs1800896 was significantly increased in severe cases when compared with the moderate group (p < 0.0001), while there was no significant difference of the risk of the C allele in deceased cases when compared with that of alive ones (p > 0.05). In conclusion, the C allele (rs1800795) of IL-6 and the C allele (rs1800896) of IL-10 were highly significant in severe cases than in moderate cases. The C allele carriage of IL-6 showed only a significant difference between alive and deceased patients and not with the C allele of IL-10.
