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. 2020 Oct 20:758:144944.
doi: 10.1016/j.gene.2020.144944. Epub 2020 Jul 3.

SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 mortalities strongly correlate with ACE1 I/D genotype

Naoki Yamamoto  1 , Yasuo Ariumi  2 , Nao Nishida  3 , Rain Yamamoto  4 , Georg Bauer  5 , Takashi Gojobori  6 , Kunitada Shimotohno  7 , Masashi Mizokami  8
Affiliations

SARS-CoV-2 infections and COVID-19 mortalities strongly correlate with ACE1 I/D genotype

Naoki Yamamoto et al. Gene. .

Abstract

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The relentless spread and pathogenicity of the virus have become a global public health emergency. One of the striking features of this pandemic is the pronounced impact on specific regions and ethnic groups. In particular, compared with East Asia, where the virus first emerged, SARS-CoV-2 has caused high rates of morbidity and mortality in Europe. This has not been experienced in past global viral infections, such as influenza, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and is unique to SARS-CoV-2. For this reason, we investigated the involvement of genetic factors associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection with a focus on angiotensin-converting enzyme (ACE)-related genes, because ACE2 is a receptor for SARS-CoV-2. We found that the ACE1 II genotype frequency in a population was significantly negatively correlated with the number of SARS-CoV-2 cases. Similarly, the ACE1 II genotype was negatively correlated with the number of deaths due to SARS-CoV-2 infection. These data suggest that the ACE1 II genotype may influence the prevalence and clinical outcome of COVID-19 and serve as a predictive marker for COVID-19 risk and severity.

Keywords: ACE1 I/D polymorphism; ACE1 II genotype; COVID-19; Ethnicity; Mortality; Prevalence; SARS-CoV-2.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Correlation between COVID-19 prevalence and ACE1 II allele frequency (%) in Europe and Asia: (A) the number of COVID-19 cases/ million populations, R2 = 0.717, R=- 0.847, (B) the number of COVID-19-related deaths/ million population, R2 = 0.570, R=- 0.755. The dashed lines indicate the median values.
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Correlation between COVID-19 prevalence and ACE1 II allele frequency (%) in Europe, the Middle East, India and East Asia: (A) the number of COVID-19 cases/ million populations, R2 = 0.536, R=- 0.732, (B) the number of COVID-19-related deaths/ million population, R2 = 0.204, R=- 0.452. The dashed lines indicate the median values.
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