Original Article

Association Between Human Leukocyte Antigen and COVID-19 Severity

Abstract

In the last days of 2019, a new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China, and less than three months its disease, now called COVID-19, was announced a global pandemic by WHO. COVID-19 usually causes respiratory symptoms and can lead to more severe conditions like ARDS. HLA has a crucial role in regulating the immune system; thus, different HLA allele types can be a protective or risk factor for some diseases, so we aimed to find such associations to determine whether some alleles can predict susceptibility or resistibility to COVID-19 and finally facilitate vaccine development. In this case-control study, 15 admitted COVID-19 cases with severe symptoms and ten individuals with mild COVID-19 symptoms were enrolled in the case and control groups, respectively. They were genotyped for HLA A/B/DR loci using a low-resolution HLA typing test. These alleles were more prevalent in case (severe COVID-19) group: A*24 (53.33% vs 10%), B*50 (20% vs 10%), B*55 (20% vs 10%), DRB1*04 (40% vs 20%) and DRB1*11 (53.33% vs 30%) but the difference was only statically significant in A*24 allele (P=0.027; odd ratio=10.286). A*24 was also more prevalent in all patients than the general population in Iran. A*24 was the only allele more prevalent in severe COVID-19 cases with statistical significance. This allele was reported to be a risk factor for such autoimmune diseases as type 1 diabetes, myasthenia gravis, and systemic lupus erythematosus, which may be related to reported immune system hyperresponsiveness in severe COVID-19 cases.

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IssueVol 59, No 7 (2021) QRcode
SectionOriginal Article(s)
DOI https://doi.org/10.18502/acta.v59i7.7019
Keywords
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)
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Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
1.
Hajebi R, Ajam A, Karbalai S, Ashraf H, Ostadali Dehaghi MR, Moradi Tabriz H, Pazoki M, Khalili F. Association Between Human Leukocyte Antigen and COVID-19 Severity. Acta Med Iran. 2021;59(7):400-405.