2023-09-18 01:31:00
▲ Italian COVID-19 medical staff
The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported on the 16th (local time) that research results showed that Neanderthal genes are associated with severe symptoms of COVID-19.
According to this, the Mario Negri Institute of Pharmacology in Milan, Italy, stated in a research paper published in the open access academic journal ‘iScience’ that it obtained these results from a survey of COVID-19 infected people in Bergamo, northern Italy.
Bergamo was the place with the highest number of deaths in Italy at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the damage caused by COVID-19 was so severe that it was once called the ‘City of the Dead’.
After examining regarding 10,000 people infected with COVID-19 in Bergamo, the institute identified several genes associated with severe respiratory disease, three of which belonged to the Neanderthal haplotype (a similar haplotype of genes that share an ancestor). said.
The research team explained that people with the Neanderthal haplotype were twice as likely to develop severe pneumonia when infected with COVID-19 than those without the disease.
It was also added that the likelihood of being admitted to the intensive care unit and relying on a ventilator was three times higher.
Giuseppe Lemucci, director of the Mario Negri Institute of Pharmacology, commented on these research results, saying that they show that a specific part of the human genome is significantly related to the risk of COVID-19 infection and severity, an important discovery in identifying the cause of differences in severity among patients. I gave it meaning.
Director Lemucci introduced that 33% of people in Bergamo who showed severe, life-threatening COVID-19 symptoms had the Neanderthal haplotype.
On the other hand, the Neanderthal haplotype was not found among those with mild symptoms or asymptomatic symptoms.
However, it is unknown whether there are more Neanderthal haplotypes in the Bergamo region than elsewhere in Italy and Europe.
The reason why so much damage occurred in some areas of northern Italy in the early stages of the pandemic is also unknown.
Scientists believe that factors such as age and air pollution, as well as the fact that northern Italy was an early infection area, so a considerable amount of time may have passed before the COVID-19 virus was discovered, may have had an impact.
Among the subjects of this study, 11 people had already shown symptoms similar to COVID-19 at the end of 2019.
The first COVID-19 case in Bergamo was reported in February 2020, and lockdown measures began in early March.
Neanderthals became extinct 40,000 years ago, but due to the influence of hybridization with modern humans, Homo sapiens, regarding 2% of the genomes of Europeans and Asians are genes inherited from Neanderthals.
The link between Neanderthal genes and COVID-19 severity was first suggested in a 2020 Nature research paper co-authored by Dr. Svante Febo, winner of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine last year.
The research team stated in the paper at the time that Europeans and Asians, who had a high proportion of COVID-19 deaths, had the Neanderthal haplotype at 16% and 50%, respectively.
On the other hand, Neanderthal haplotypes were almost non-existent in Africans.
Scientists believe that younger age and the absence of the Neanderthal haplotype may be the reason for the lower infection and severity rates in Africa.
(Photo = Getty Images Korea)
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