Download This PaperAfrican-American Population Is More Vulnerable to Sars-CoV2 Infection and IFN-Beta Supplement Can Be An Effective Treatment
13 Pages Posted: 3 Apr 2020
Date Written: April 2, 2020
Abstract
COVID-19 is a pandemic and shows its devastating consequences all over the world. IFIH1 is a human host gene that senses coronavirus RNA and triggers interferon production as a first line of defense of the host immune system to fight against virus. The epidemiology of viral infection of IFIH1 polymorphism, rs1990760 (C>T; aaA946T) is well studied and the minor allele T resists viral infection in the population. The frequency of minor allele (Tmaf) varies widely in various populations from African (0.06) to Chinese (0.19) to some Caucasian (0.69). Mutated protein (946T) increases interferon production and protects from lethal viral infection in knock-in mouse model. Comparing the infection rate from the epidemiological data in initial days of infection from China and Italy when the social restrictions were not imposed, I show that infection rate in Italy is lower (Tmaf, 0.56) than China (Tmaf for southern China, 0.23) as expected from T allele frequency. However, this mutation rate in USA and Spain is intermediate between those two countries despite high Caucasian overall Tmaf (0.69) and that could be attributed to more admixed African population in these two countries. These analyses suggest that African-American with low Tmaf (ranging from 0.06 to 0.35) are more vulnerable to SARS-COV2 infection and IFN-beta supplement could prevent from this infection. Thus IFN-beta supplement could be developed as an effective treatment for SARS-COV2.
Keywords: Coronavirus, COVID-19, Allele frequency, Interferon-beta
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