ArticleMultidisciplinary respiratory medicine2021
Do gene-environment interactions play a role in COVID-19 distribution? The case of Alpha-1 Antitrypsin, air pollution and COVID-19.
Article in Multidisciplinary respiratory medicine, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed, 8 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Inhibition of Serine Proteases by Serpins Is Augmented by Negatively Charged Heparin: A Concise Review of Some Clinically Relevant Interactions.International journal of molecular sciences · 2024Review
- Alpha-1-antitrypsin antagonizes COVID-19: a review of the epidemiology, molecular mechanisms, and clinical evidence.Biochemical Society transactions · 2023Review
- Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 5 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundGene-environment interactions are relevant for several respiratory diseases. This communication raises the hypothesis that the severity of COVID-19, a complex disease where the individual response to the infection may play a significant role, could partly result from a gene-environment interaction between air-pollution and Alpha-1 Antitrypsin (AAT) genes.
methodsTo evaluate the impact of the AAT and air pollution interaction on COVID-19, we introduced an AAT*air pollution global risk score summing together, in each country, an air pollution score (ozone, nitrogen dioxide and fine particulate matter) and an AAT score (which sums the ranked frequency of MZ, SZ, MS). We compared this global score with the ranking of European countries in terms of death number per million persons.
resultsThe ranking of the AAT*air pollution global risk score matched the ranking of the countries in terms of the observed COVID-19 deaths per 1M inhabitants, namely in the case of the first European countries: Belgium, UK, Spain, Italy, Sweden, France. We observed parallelism between the number of COVID deaths and the AAT*air pollution global risk in Europe. AAT anti-protease, immune-modulating and coagulation-modulating activities may explain this finding, although very speculatively.
conclusionsEven if further studies taking into account genetic background, population density, temporal dynamics of individual epidemics, access to healthcare, social disparities and immunological response to SARS-CoV2 are needed, our preliminary observation urges to open a discussion on gene-environment interactions in COVID-19.
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