A study published in Nature shows that a segment of DNA that causes their carriers to have an up to three times higher risk of developing severe COVID-19 is inherited from Neandertals. The study was conducted by researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
COVID-19 affects some people much more severely than others. Some reasons for this – such as old age – are already known, but other as yet unknown factors also play a role.
This summer, a large international study linked a gene cluster on chromosome 3 to a higher risk of hospitalization and respiratory failure upon infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
