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

Abstract

University of Washington Abstract Genetic risk factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility in multiethnic populations Aditya Dandapani Sriram Chair of the Supervisory Committee:Kathleen Kerr Department of Biostatistics 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.