Gene Variants Related to Cardiovascular and Pulmonary Diseases May Correlate with Severe Outcome of COVID-19

Abstract

Background: Severe outcomes of COVID-19 account for up to 15% of all cases. The study aims to check if any gene variants related to cardiovascular (CVD) and pulmonary diseases (PD) are correlated with a severe outcome of COVID-19 in a Polish cohort of COVID-19 patients. Methods: In this study, a subset of 747 samples from unrelated individuals collected across Poland in 2020 and 2021 was used and whole-genome sequencing was performed. Results: The GWAS analysis of SNPs and short indels located in genes related to CVD identified one variant significant in COVID-19 severe outcome in the HADHA gene, while for the PD gene panel, we found two significant variants in the DRC1 gene. In this study, both potentially protective and risk variants were identified, of which variants in the HADHA gene deserve the most attention. Conclusions: This is the first study reporting the association between the HADHA and DRC1 genetic variants and COVID-19 severe outcome based on the cohort WGS analysis. Although all the identified variants are localised in introns, they may be correlated and therefore inherited along with other risk variants, potentially causative to severe outcome of COVID-19 but not discovered yet.