Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, 272, Rama VI Road, Ratchathewi, Bangkok, 10400, Thailand.
Pornchai Matangkasombut Center for Microbial Genomics, Department of Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Mahidol University, 272, Rama VI Road, Ratchathewi, Bangkok, 10400, Thailand.
Microb Genom. 2021 Dec;7(12). doi: 10.1099/mgen.0.000734.
In this study, we performed genome-wide association analyses on SARS-CoV-2 genomes to identify genetic mutations associated with pre-symptomatic/asymptomatic COVID-19 cases. Various potential covariates and confounding factors of COVID-19 severity, including patient age, gender and country, as well as virus phylogenetic relatedness were adjusted for. In total, 3021 full-length genomes of SARS-CoV-2 generated from original clinical samples and whose patient status could be determined conclusively as either 'pre-symptomatic/asymptomatic' or 'symptomatic' were retrieved from the GISAID database. We found that the mutation 11 083G>T, located in the coding region of non-structural protein 6, is significantly associated with asymptomatic COVID-19. Patient age is positively correlated with symptomatic infection, while gender is not significantly correlated with the development of the disease. We also found that the effects of the mutation, patient age and gender do not vary significantly among countries, although each country appears to have varying baseline chances of COVID-19 symptom development.
在这项研究中，我们对 SARS-CoV-2 基因组进行了全基因组关联分析，以鉴定与无症状/有症状 COVID-19 病例相关的遗传突变。调整了 COVID-19 严重程度的各种潜在协变量和混杂因素，包括患者年龄、性别和国家，以及病毒的系统发育关系。总共从 GISAID 数据库中检索到了 3021 个源自原始临床样本的全长 SARS-CoV-2 基因组，这些样本的患者状态可以明确确定为“无症状/有症状”或“有症状”。我们发现，位于非结构蛋白 6 编码区的突变 11083G>T 与无症状 COVID-19 显著相关。患者年龄与有症状感染呈正相关，而性别与疾病的发展无显著相关性。我们还发现，尽管每个国家的 COVID-19 症状发生的基线概率似乎不同，但突变、患者年龄和性别对各国的影响并无显著差异。
