Polygenic risk scores for asthma and allergic disease associate with COVID-19 severity in 9/11 responders.

Background: Genetic factors contribute to individual differences in the severity of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). A portion of genetic predisposition can be captured using polygenic risk scores (PRS). Relatively little is known about the associations between PRS and COVID-19 severity or post-acute COVID-19 in community-dwelling individuals.
Methods: Participants in this study were 983 World Trade Center responders infected for the first time with SARS-CoV-2 (mean age at infection = 56.06; 93.4% male; 82.7% European ancestry). Seventy-five (7.6%) responders were in the severe COVID-19 category; 306 (31.1%) reported at least one post-acute COVID-19 symptom at 4-week follow-up. Analyses were adjusted for population stratification and demographic covariates.
Findings: The asthma PRS was associated with severe COVID-19 category (odds ratio [OR] = 1.61, 95% confidence interval: 1.17-2.21) and more severe COVID-19 symptomatology (β = .09, p = .01), independently of respiratory disease diagnosis. Severe COVID-19 category was also associated with the allergic disease PRS (OR = 1.97, [1.26-3.07]) and the PRS for COVID-19 hospitalization (OR = 1.35, [1.01-1.82]). PRS for coronary artery disease and type II diabetes were not associated with COVID-19 severity.
Conclusion: Recently developed polygenic biomarkers for asthma, allergic disease, and COVID-19 hospitalization capture some of the individual differences in severity and clinical course of COVID-19 illness in a community population.
Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
(Copyright: © 2023 Waszczuk et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)