SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity are associated with genetic variants affecting gene expression in a wide variety of tissues
Description
Variability in SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and COVID-19 disease severity between individuals is partly due to genetic factors. Here, we identifyied four genomic loci with suggestive associations for SARS-CoV-2 susceptibility and nineteen for COVID-19 disease severity. Four of these 23 loci likely hadve an ethnicity-specific component. GWAS signals in eleven loci colocalized with eQTLs associated with the expression of 20 genes in 62 tissues/cell types (range: 1:43 tissues/gene) including lung, brain, heart, muscle, skin as well as the digestive system and immune system. We performed genetic fine mapping to compute 99% credible SNP sets, which identifyied ten GWAS loci that includedhave eight or fewer SNPs in the credible set, including three loci with one single likely causal SNP. Our study suggests that the diverse symptoms and disease severity of COVID-19 observed between individuals is associated with variants across the genome affecting gene expression levels in a wide variety of tissue types. Supplementary Tables Table S1: Genome-wide-significant COVID-19 loci Table S2: Colocalization between GWAS signals and eQTLs in 62 tissues at each of the 23 genome-wide significant loci Table S3: Fine mapped loci using eQTL information Table S4: Posterior probabilities of association at each of the 11 fine mapped loci
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Supplemental tables. See manuscript