A gene associated with lupus could help to protect against severe Covid-19, according to a new UK study.
Scientists at King’s College London say they have identified a correlation between the genes associated with severe COVID-19 and those with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), which could enable researchers to understand how the biology of the immune system is calibrated to protect individuals against infection.
A study published in *PLOS Genetics* by David Morris and Timothy Vyse, and their collaborators, shows that TYK2, a gene associated with both SLE and severe Covid-19 provides protection against viral infection, but increases risk for autoimmune disease.
They used multiple analyses to compare the genetics of severe Covid-19 with those of SLE, including an approach that can focus on specific areas of the genome. They went on to access data on genes and the structure of the genome obtained from several biomedical databases to understand the biology of the shared genetics.
“Our results indicate that there are shared genetic effects between the autoimmune disease SLE and the clinical consequences of Covid-19,” they write.
“The locus with the most evidence of shared association (TYK2) is involved in interferon production, a process that is important in response to viral infection and known to be dysregulated in SLE patients. In seeking to uncover the mechanisms underlying these relationships it was apparent that the functional effects of the risk and protective genotypes are complex.”
Dr Morris and Prof Vyse, who led the study, describe their findings as “exciting”, but say further studies will be needed to fully understand the genetic relationships between Covid-19 and other diseases.
They add the study has its limitations, such as the overrepresentation of European ancestry in the datasets used to perform the analyses.
Wang Y, Guga S, Wu K et al. COVID-19 and systemic lupus erythematosus genetics: A balance between autoimmune disease risk and protection against infection. *PLoS Genetics* 3 November 2022
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