Why Indians are natural warriors against Covid-19?

Covid-19 is a constantly changing emergent situation for two hundred countries all across the globe. Lots of efforts are being made by the medicine experts and scientists in order to find out a cure for this disease. This study focuses on a single nucleotide variant (SNV) or a change at a single nucleotide position in a particular gene which has a significant role in the pathogenesis of this viral infection. ACE2 gene encodes an ACE2 receptor protein, interacting to which the SARS-CoV-2 virus enters the host cell. Our study is based on the fact that polymorphism rs2285666 (also called G8790A) present in the ‘culprit’ ACE2 gene helps in decreasing the susceptibility towards the disease. It is an another well-established fact that decreased ACE2 level contributes to severe consequences of this infection, because of the increased level of ACE1 expression in these patients which results into increased susceptibility towards hypertension.

Our study uses these two information to find out the frequency prevalence of this particular polymorphism in Indian Populations. We have found out that high frequency of the polymorphism in Indian populations’ accounts for the decreased infection rate for this disease. In short we can say the mean frequency of ~0.6 for the allele TT (-plus strand) or AA (-minus strand) on rs2285666 in ACE2 gene makes us Indians ‘natural warriors’ against the disease with significantly lower infection rate. It is also revealed through this study that we share this high frequency of polymorphism with East Asians rather than with Europeans, Americans or African who are more negatively affected by this disease.

Therefore, by establishing a direct correlation between the number of cases of Covid-19 and frequency of this allele on rs2285666 in different states of our country, we have shown how high frequency corresponds to significantly lowered infection rate.

References (must reads):

1. Srivastava A, Bandopadhyay A, Das D, Pandey RK, Singh V, Khanam N, Srivastava N, Singh PP, Dubey PK, Pathak A, Gupta P, Rai N, Sultana GNN and Chaubey G (2020) Genetic Association of ACE2 rs2285666 Polymorphism With COVID-19 Spatial Distribution in India. Front. Genet. 11:564741. doi: 10.3389/fgene.2020.564741
2. Srivastava, A., Pandey, R. K., Singh, P. P., Kumar, P., Rasalkar, A. A., Tamang, R., et al. (2020). Most frequent South Asian haplotypes of ACE2 share identity by descent with East Eurasian populations. PLoS One 15:e0238255. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0238255

Revelations: The author is the part of the team which has conducted these studies.