Human leukocyte antigen and COVID-19 susceptibility

Aims:In the last days of 2019, a new coronavirus emerged in Wuhan, China and less than 3 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 regulating the immune system thus different HLA allele types can be a protective or risk factor for some disease 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. Methods: In this case-control study, 15 admitted COVID-19 cases with severe symptoms and 10 individuals with mild COVID-19 symptoms were enrolled in case and control groups respectively. They were genotyped for HLA A/B/DR loci using low-resolution HLA typing test. Results: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 value=0.027; odd ratio=10.286). A*24 was also more prevalent in all patients than general population in Iran. Conclusions: A*24 was the only allele more prevalent in severe COVID-19 cases with statistical significance. this allele reported being a risk factor for such autoimmune diseases like type 1 diabetes, myasthenia gravis and systemic lupus erythematous, which may be related to reported immune system hyperresponsiveness in severe COVID-19 cases.