MBL deficiency-causing B allele (rs1800450) as a risk factor for severe COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic represents one of the greatest challenges in modern medicine. The disease is characterized by a variable clinical phenotype, ranging from asymptomatic carriage to severe and/or critical disease, which bears poor prognosis and outcome because of the development of severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (SARS) requiring ICU hospitalization, multi-organ failure and death. Therefore, the determination of risk factors predisposing to disease phenotype is of outmost importance. The aim of our study was to evaluate which predisposing factors, including MBL2 genotyping, affected clinical phenotype in 264 COVID-19 patients. We demonstrated that older age along with underlying comorbidities, primarily obesity, chronic inflammatory disorders and diabetes mellitus, represent the most important risk factors related to hospitalization, the development of pneumonia and SARS. Moreover, we found that the presence of the MBL deficiency-causing B allele (rs1800450) was significantly associated with almost 2-fold increased risk for developing pneumonia and requiring hospitalization, suggesting its usage as a molecular predictor of severe disease in SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals.

Keywords: COVID-19; MBL deficiency; MBL2 genotyping; Prognosis; SARS-CoV-2.

Fig. 1

MBL genotypes and the risk of pneumonia development and hospitalization. Bars demonstrate allele frequencies of B, C, D and X alleles and the frequency of MBL deficiency; (*) indicates a statistical significance < 0.05; ns, non-significant.