Genetic Risk Factors for the Development of COVID-19 Coronavirus Infection

O S Glotov; A N Chernov; S G Scherbak; V S Baranov

doi:10.1134/S1022795421080056

Genetic Risk Factors for the Development of COVID-19 Coronavirus Infection

Russ J Genet. 2021;57(8):878-892. doi: 10.1134/S1022795421080056. Epub 2021 Aug 30.

Authors

O S Glotov^{1

2}, A N Chernov¹, S G Scherbak^{1

3}, V S Baranov²

Affiliations

¹ City Hospital no. 40, Sestroretsk, 197706 St. Petersburg, Russia.
² Ott Research Institute of Obstetrics, Gynecology, and Reproductology, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.
³ St. Petersburg State University, 199034 St. Petersburg, Russia.

Abstract

The COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has spread to 215 countries around the world and caused tens of millions of infections and more than a million deaths worldwide. In the midst of COVID-19 infection, it is extremely important to identify new protein and gene targets that may be highly sensitive diagnostic and prognostic markers of the severity and outcome of the disease for combating this pandemic. Identification of individual genetic predisposition allows personalizing programs of medical rehabilitation and therapy. It has now been shown that the transmissibility and severity of COVID-19 infection can be affected by gene variants in both the human body (ACE2, HLA-B*4601, FcγRIIA, MBL, TMPRSS2, TNFA, IL6, blood group A antigen, etc.) and the virus itself (ORF8 in RNA polymerase, ORF6 in RNA primase, S, N, E proteins). The presence of mutations in the proteins of the virus can change the affinity and specificity for the binding of targeted drugs to them, being the molecular basis of individual differences in the response of the human body to antiviral drugs and/or vaccines. The review summarizes the data on the variants of the genomes of the coronavirus and humans associated with an individual predisposition to an increased or decreased risk of transmission, severity, and outcome of COVID-19 infection. Targeted drugs and vaccines being developed for the therapy of COVID-19 infection are briefly reviewed.

Keywords: COVID-19; COVID-19 vaccines; coronavirus infection; drugs; genes; polymorphisms; susceptibility to coronavirus infection.

© Pleiades Publishing, Inc. 2021, ISSN 1022-7954, Russian Journal of Genetics, 2021, Vol. 57, No. 8, pp. 878–892. © Pleiades Publishing, Inc., 2021.Russian Text © The Author(s), 2021, published in Genetika, 2021, Vol. 57, No. 8, pp. 871–886.