Alternative splicing of OAS1 alters the risk for severe COVID-19.

Jennifer E Huffman Guillaume Butler-Laporte Atlas Khan Theodore G Drivas Gina M Peloso Tomoko Nakanishi Anurag Verma Krzysztof Kiryluk John Brent Richards Hugo Zeberg

Published in: medRxiv : the preprint server for health sciences (2021)

A locus containing OAS1/2/3 has been identified as a risk locus for severe COVID-19 among Europeans ancestry individuals, with a protective haplotype of ∼75 kilobases derived from Neanderthals. Here, we show that among several potentially causal variants at this locus, a splice variant of OAS1 occurs in people of African ancestry independently of the Neanderthal haplotype and confers protection against COVID-19 of a magnitude similar to that seen in individuals without African ancestry.

Keyphrases

coronavirus disease
genome wide association study
sars cov
early onset
respiratory syndrome coronavirus
copy number
gene expression
dna methylation
drug induced