Genetic variations may put some individuals at higher risk for severe infection
WEDNESDAY, Nov. 4, 2020 (HealthDay News) — Alzheimer disease and dementia are risk factors for hospital admission due to COVID-19, according to a study published online Oct. 24 in Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.
Jingqi Zhou, Ph.D., from the University of Georgia in Athens, and colleagues examined the association of COVID-19 with 974 medical conditions and 30 blood biomarkers using data from 1,091 participants in the U.K. Biobank who tested positive for COVID-19.
The researchers found that the most significant risk factors for COVID-19 include Alzheimer disease (odds ratio, 2.29), dementia (odds ratio, 2.16), and the overall category of delirium, dementia, and amnestic and other cognitive disorders (odds ratio, 1.90). There were associations seen between genetic variants in severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 infection-related genes and COVID-19 (odds ratio, 1.33) and other phenotypes, including immune deficiency and prostate cancer.
“Our unbiased phenome-wide study in [the] U.K. Biobank confirmed known and identified novel risk factors for COVID-19, including dementia, Alzheimer’s disease, type 2 diabetes, blood biomarkers of cardiovascular health, and genetic variants in TMPRSS2,” the authors write.
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