[ad_1]
According to one study, there is a possible connection between the ancient Neanderthal legacy in our genetic makeup and the severe courses of Covid-19. “The probability that people who have inherited this genetic variant will have to be artificially ventilated when infected with the new coronavirus Sars-CoV-2 is approximately three times higher,” said Hugo Zeberg of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. (MPI EVA).
Another risk factor
The variant is another risk factor in addition to many long known, such as age and some previous diseases. A study conducted in the summer found that a group of genes on chromosome 3 may be linked to an increased risk of hospital treatment and artificial ventilation in the case of Covid-19. The risk of a severe form of the disease is up to three times higher in people with this variant, it was said at the time.
Zeberg and his colleague from MPI, Svante Pääbo, have now analyzed the gene pool and specifically compared it to the genetic makeup of Neanderthals and early Denisovans. The DNA sequence in the cluster variant that creates the highest risk is very similar to the DNA sequences of a 50,000-year-old Croatian Neanderthal, they explain in the trade journal. Nature. “It turns out that modern humans inherited this genetic variant from Neanderthals when they intermixed with each other around 60,000 years ago,” says Zeberg, who is also doing research at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm.
Spread in South Asia
There are significant differences in the regional distribution of this genetic variant, explains the duo of researchers. It is particularly common in people from South Asia, where around half the population has it in their genome, and in Bangladesh as much as 63 percent. In Europe, around one in six people (around 16 percent) inherited it; however, in Africa and East Asia, the variant hardly occurs.
