Medscape A large-scale global study has identified genetic variants that are risk factors for long COVID, a discovery that helps researchers better understand the biological systems involving the disease and one small, early step toward the elusive goal of developing a long COVID diagnostic test.
International researchers with the Long COVID Host Genetics Initiative used data from 33 independent studies and 19 countries across North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia to analyze the genomes of nearly 16,000 patients with long COVID, representing populations from six genetic ancestries. Nearly 1.9 million controls were included in the genome-wide association study, a research method that scans complete sets of DNA to identify genetic variations associated with a specific trait or disease.
Genetic variants found in the FOXP4 gene had a statistically significant risk linked to long COVID, the study, published in Nature Genetics, found. The FOXP4 gene is known to impact lung function, and its expression levels were higher in those with long COVID than in controls. In addition, the risk variants had a consistent effect across different ancestries.