Some people of European origin would be carriers of a defective gene which would promote dementia and increase the risk of contracting a severe form of Covid-19.
-1593433078.jpg "People with the dementia gene are more prone to Covid-19")
- A defective gene present in the majority in people of European origin, would promote severe forms of Covid-19.
- This gene, called APOE e4e4, would increase up to 14 times the risk of having Alzheimer’s disease and would make its carriers more vulnerable to heart disease.
- The results of this study support a previous study from May, which highlighted that dementia was one of the comorbidities of the coronavirus and that it was associated with higher mortality.
It would seem that the Covid-19 does not choose its targets at random. In addition to these respiratory complications, this disease is accused, pell-mell, of trigger diabetes in people who have itto be more severe in asymptomatic patients and of cause complications in more than one in five people. Researchers from the University of Exeter School of Medicine (UK) and the University of Connecticut School of Medicine (USA) have made another discovery. According to them, people who have a defective gene linked to dementia have a double risk of developing a severe form of dementia. Covid-19. According to the study published in the Journal of Gerontology: Medical Sciencespeople with dementia are three times more likely to catch Covid-19 than others.
Dementia and Covid-19
To reach this conclusion, the research teams analyzed data from the British Biobank, the national database which contains the health and genetic data of 500,000 people. They found that participants with a European ancestor who carried two faulty copies of the APOE gene called e4e4 are at high risk of developing severe Covid-19-like disease.
What complicates matters further is that one in 36 people of European descent have two faulty copies of this gene, which is known to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease by up to 14 times and also makes the person vulnerable to heart disease. According to the researchers, these gene mutations double the risk of Covid-19 even in people who have not developed these diseases.
While the high prevalence of the virus in care homes may be a factor, the study suggests that genetic components also play a role. Of the profiles examined, most of them had not been exposed to the virus. Among them, 2.36% of participants of European descent had the defective APOE e4e4 gene. In addition, 5.13% of people who tested positive for Covid-19 had this genetic variant. This showed twice the risk of e3e3 (410 per 100,000 vs. 179 per 100,000).
Increased vulnerability
According to Dr. Chia-Ling Kuo, of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and co-author of the study, the results may help determine how this faulty gene leads to vulnerability to Covid-19. This could pave the way for new treatments. Furthermore, she points to the fact that the increased risk of disease associated with advanced age could be due to specific biological differences.
For Professor David Melzer, who led the team, “several studies have shown that people with dementia are at high risk of developing a severe form of Covid-19. This study suggests that the elevated risk may not simply be due to the effects of dementia, advancing age or frailty or exposure to the virus in care homes.”
The results of the study presented by David Melzer and Chia-Ling Kuo are consistent with those ofa previous study carried out last May (not peer reviewed) in 16,749 hospitalized patients in the UK. It demonstrated that dementia was one of the common comorbidities of Covid-19 and was associated with higher mortality.
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