Common gene variant linked to COVID mortality

Science Daily ^

[FarCenter]

...

One or two amino acids make a difference. Individuals with APOE4 are at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's and atherosclerosis, and Tavazoie and Benjamin Ostendorf, a postdoctoral fellow in his lab, have demonstrated that APOE4 and APOE2 impact the immune response against melanoma. As the pandemic progressed, Tavazoie and Ostendorf began to wonder whether APOE variants might impact COVID outcomes, too. "We had looked only at non-infectious diseases," he says. "But what if APOE variants also made people vulnerable to an infectious agent, like SARS-CoV-2? Could they cause different immune responses against a virus?"

One or two amino acids make a difference. Individuals with APOE4 are at greater risk of developing Alzheimer's and atherosclerosis,

...

The lab then turned to retrospective human studies. In an analysis of 13,000 patients in the UK Biobank, the researchers found that individuals with two copies of either APOE4 or APOE2 were more likely to have died of COVID than those with two copies of APOE3. (Roughly three percent of individuals have two copies of APOE2 or APOE4, representing an estimated 230 million people worldwide.)

Tavazoie emphasizes that there is no evidence that the 40 percent of individuals carrying only one of these alleles are at increased risk. Moreover, he says those with two APOE2 or APOE4 alleles are likely at lower risk today than the data indicates. "Vaccination changes the picture," he explains. "Data in UK Biobank spans the length of the pandemic, and many of the individuals who died early on would likely have been protected had they been vaccinated."

[FarCenter]

This helps explain why institutionalized elderly were so susceptible. Although certainly many died because of the stupidity of the policy of discharging hospitalized Covid patients back into nursing homes.

[Gene Eric]

Pick your favorite cause for mortality — diabetes, obesity, dementia, car accidents, unattended, recklessly intubated...

The last two years were about killing — the opportunistic disregard for life.

It was a global terror attack — SARS the agent, the medical community the terrorists

[cuz1961]

many of the individuals who died early on would likely have been protected had they been vaccinated.”

/\

This is what in poker is known as a “ tell”.