While Neanderthals are no longer among us, their genes linger on in many of us and can impact our risk of falling sick. Learn about the bizarre gene that raises COVID risk but protects against HIV.
While Neanderthals are no longer among us, their genes linger on in many of us and can impact our risk of falling sick. In the fall of 2020,that some who carried these vestigial genes had inherited a severe genetic risk factor for COVID-19, making them more likely to become severely ill and even hospitalized.
One receptor in particular, CCR5, is used by the HIV virus to infect white blood cells. The study’s lead author, Hugo Zeberg of Sweden’s Karolinska Institutet and the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Germany, found that the COVID-19 genetic risk factor actually encodes a stunted form of the receptor, which renders it nonfunctional. Basically, anyone carrying this variant has next to none CCR5 receptors dotting their cells’ surfaces.
He set out analyzing patient data from three major biobanks . Zeberg found that for people who carried this COVID-19 genetic risk factor, it reduced their risk of contracting HIV by 27 percent.Bad news if a person contracts COVID-19, good news because it offers protection against getting infected with HIV.
Because this variant has been around in humans for quite awhile—long before HIV’s appearance in the 20th century—Zeberg believes this enduring genetic armor might have arisen in response to other diseases our ancestors were exposed to, like smallpox, bubonic plague, or cholera.
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