SARS-CoV-2 is a single-stranded RNA virus that consists of 29, 881 nucleotides and
causes COVID-19 disease. COVID-19 represents a world-wide epidemic that has
serious impact on health care system and economics on every country because of the virus epidemiological features, as well as the variety of symptoms it causes.
Environmental, social and clinical factor have impact on severity of COVID-19
disease symptoms, but that the host genetics may also have a role in the severity of clinical symptoms of the disease. Published data suggest that patients genetic make-up can contribute to insight of the disease and possibly identify theraputeic targets.
Gene panel comprised of 16 genes was designed for IonTorrent S5 GeneStudio.
MiSeq Illumina platform was used as an additional next generation sequencing
methodology. Comprehensive bioinformatical data was performed, and based on the data, primers for Sanger sequencing were designed for confirmational sequencing. Chi-square test of goodness-of-fit was used to compare clinical severity between male and female participants, and to compare clinical severity between patients with different comorbidities (cardiovascular, metabolic, respiratory and other comorbidities). One-way anova was used to compare mean age among the different clinical severity groups.
Large number of variants was found and analyzed genes and p-values were
calculated for three determined groups: light, moderate and severe. Variants that
confer susceptibility to COVID-19 have been identified, as well as the statistical
difference in frequency in detected variants. Detected variants should be furtherly
processed and analyzed on the greater number of samples. Based on our results, there are many possibilities for further research: clinical exome study and software
bioinformatical analysis on a larger study group and Sanger sequencing on variants
of interest on a greater number of samples. In the end, our research showed variants that could be used for personalized treatment of COVID-19 using cost-effective real- time PCR methodology. Less...