SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a variety of tissues

Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identify 4 genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and 19 for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely have an ethnicity-specific component. Genome-wide association study (GWAS) signals in 11 loci colocalize with expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene), including lung, brain, heart, muscle, and skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We perform genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identify 10 GWAS loci that have eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome, affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types

A first update on mapping the human genetic architecture of COVID-19

peer reviewe

Related Factors and Use of Free Preventive Health Services among Adults with Intellectual Disabilities in Taiwan.

[[abstract]]Background This study aimed to investigate the utilization of preventive health services in the adults with intellectual disabilities from the nationwide database. Methods The research method of this study is secondary data analysis. The data was obtained from three nationwide databases from 2006 to 2008. This study employed descriptive statistics to analyze the use and rate of preventive health services by intellectual disabled adults. Chi-square test was used to determine the relationship between the utilization of preventive health services and these variables. Multivariate logistic regression analysis was used to explore the factors that affect intellectual disabled adults’ use of preventive health services. Results Our findings indicated 16.65% of people with intellectual disabilities aged over 40 years used the preventive health services. Females were more frequent users than males (18.27% vs. 15.21%, p <0.001). The utilization rate decreased with increasing severity of intellectual disabilities. The utilization was lowest (13.83%) for those with very severe disability, whereas that was the highest (19.38%) for those with mild severity. The factors significantly influencing utilization of the services included gender, age, and marital status, urbanization of resident areas, monthly payroll, low-income household status, catastrophic illnesses status and relevant chronic diseases and severity of disability. Conclusions Although Taiwan’s Health Promotion Administration (HPA) has provided free preventive health services for more than 15 years, people with intellectual disabilities using preventive health care tend to be low. Demographics, economic conditions, health status, relevant chronic diseases, environmental factor, and severity of disability are the main factors influencing the use of preventive healthcare. According to the present findings, it is recommended that the government should increase the reimbursement of the medical staff performing health examinations for the persons with intellectual disabilities. It is also suggested to conduct media publicity and education to the public and the nursing facilities for the utilization of adult preventive health services