Covid-19 patients carrying a segment of Neanderthal DNA, inherited from a cross with the human genome some 60,000 years ago, are at greater risk of severe complications from the disease, according to researchers.
The genetic coding inherited from this distant cousin of the human species makes them, for example, three times more likely to need mechanical ventilation, according to the study published in
Nature on
Wednesday, September 30.
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“
It is striking that the genetic inheritance of Neanderthals has such tragic consequences during the current pandemic
,” said one of the co-authors, Svante Paabo, director of the genetics department at the German Max Planck Institute for Anthropological Evolution.
The researchers concluded that while modern humans and Neanderthals may have inherited this gene fragment from a common ancestor around half a million years ago, it was more likely to have been integrated into the human genome by more recent population crosses.
About 16% of Europeans wear it, and roughly half of the population in South Asia, with the highest proportion (63%) in Bangladesh.
The incriminated gene segment is almost absent from the genome of the inhabitants of East Asia and Africa.