Publication type
Journal Article
Authors
- Vilma Lammi
- Tomoko Nakanishi
- Samuel E. Jones
- Shea J. Andrews
- Juha Karjalainen
- Beatriz Cortés
- Heath E. O'Brien
- Brian E. Fulton-Howard
- Hele H. Haapaniemi
- Axel Schmidt
- Ruth E. Mitchell
- Abdou Mousas
- Massimo Mangino
- Alicia Huerta-Chagoya
- Nasa Sinnott-Armstrong
- Elizabeth T. Cirulli
- Marc Vaudel
- Alex S.F. Kwong
- Amit K. Maiti
- Minttu Marttila
- Chiara Batini
- Francesca Minnai
- Anna Dearman
- C.A. Robert Warmerdam
- Celia B. Sequeros
- Thomas W. Winkler
- Daniel M. Jordan
- Lindsay Guare
- Ekaterina Vergasova
- Eirini Marouli
- Pasquale Striano
- Ummu Afeera Zainulabid
- Ashutosh Kumar
- Hajar Fauzan Ahmad
- Ryuya Edahiro
- Shuhei Azekawa
- Joseph J. Grzymski
- Makoto Ishii
- Yukinori Okada
- Noam D. Beckmann
- Meena Kumari
- Ralf Wagner
- Iris M. Heid
- Catherine John
- Patrick J. Short
- Per Magnus
- Karina Banasik
- Frank Geller
- Lude H. Franke
- Alexander Rakitko
- Emma L. Duncan
- Alessandra Renieri
- Konstantinos K. Tsilidis
- Rafael de Cid
- Ahmadreza Niavarani
- Teresa Tusié-Luna
- Shefali S. Verma
- George Davey Smith
- Nicholas J. Timpson
- Mark J. Daly
- Andrea Ganna
- Eva C. Schulte
- J. Brent Richards
- Kerstin U. Ludwig
- Michael Hultström
- Hugo Zeberg
- Hanna M. Ollila
Publication date
July 1, 2023
Summary:
Infections can lead to persistent or long-term symptoms and diseases such as shingles after varicella zoster, cancers after human papillomavirus, or rheumatic fever after streptococcal infections(1,2). Similarly, infection by SARS-CoV-2 can result in Long COVID, a condition characterized by symptoms of fatigue and pulmonary and cognitive dysfunction(3-5). The biological mechanisms that contribute to the development of Long COVID remain to be clarified. We leveraged the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative(6,7) to perform a genome-wide association study for Long COVID including up to 6,450 Long COVID cases and 1,093,995 population controls from 24 studies across 16 countries. We identified the first genome-wide significant association for Long COVID at the FOXP4 locus. FOXP4 has been previously associated with COVID-19 severity(6), lung function(8), and cancers(9), suggesting a broader role for lung function in the pathophysiology of Long COVID. While we identify COVID-19 severity as a causal risk factor for Long COVID, the impact of the genetic risk factor located in the FOXP4 locus could not be solely explained by its association to severe COVID-19. Our findings further support the role of pulmonary dysfunction and COVID-19 severity in the development of Long COVID.
Published in
medRxiv
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.06.29.23292056
Subjects
Notes
Open Access
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted medRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC 4.0
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