Altered Blood Cell Traits Underlie a Major Genetic Locus of Severe COVID-19

Abstract

Background: The genetic locus 3p21.31 has been associated with severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but the underlying pathophysiological mechanism is unknown.

Methods: To identify intermediate traits associated with the 3p21.31 locus, we first performed a phenome-wide association study (PheWAS) with 923 phenotypes in 310 999 European individuals from the UK Biobank. For genes potentially regulated by the COVID-19 risk variant, we examined associations between their expression and the polygenic score (PGS) of 1263 complex traits in a meta-analysis of 31 684 blood samples. For the prioritized blood cell traits, we tested their associations with age and sex in the same UK Biobank sample.

Results: Our PheWAS highlighted multiple blood cell traits to be associated with the COVID-19 risk variant, including monocyte count and percentage (p = 1.07 × 10-8, 4.09 × 10-13), eosinophil count and percentage (p = 5.73 × 10-3, 2.20 × 10-3), and neutrophil percentage (p = 3.23 × 10-3). The PGS analysis revealed positive associations between the expression of candidate genes and genetically predicted counts of specific blood cells: CCR3 with eosinophil and basophil (p = 5.73 × 10-21, 5.08 × 10-19); CCR2 with monocytes (p = 2.40 × 10-10); and CCR1 with monocytes and neutrophil (p = 1.78 × 10-6, 7.17 × 10-5). Additionally, we found that almost all examined white blood cell traits are significantly different across age and sex groups.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that altered blood cell traits, especially those of monocyte, eosinophil, and neutrophil, may represent the mechanistic links between the genetic locus 3p21.31 and severe COVID-19. They may also underlie the increased risk of severe COVID-19 in older adults and men.

Keywords: Blood cells; COVID-19; Eosinophil; Monocyte; Phenome-wide association study.