HYDERABAD: A study published in nature journal Scientific Reports has highlighted the need to focus on the relationship between Covid-19 disease severity and genetic make up of the South Asians, especially keeping in mind the various castes and tribal populations. A major finding of the study is that a particular DNA segment that has been found to be strongly associated with the Covid-19 severity among Europeans, does not have any association with disease severity when it comes to the South Asian population.
This is despite the fact that the particular DNA segment is present in around 50 per cent of the South Asian population, as against 16 percent the European population. The study was led by Dr Kumarasamy Thangaraj, Director of the Hyderabad-based Centre for DNA Fingerprinting and Diagnostics (CDFD) and Chief Scientist at the Centre for Cellular and Molecular Biology (CCMB), and Prof Gyane shwe r Chaubey of Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi.
Dr Thangaraj says: “In this study, we compared infection and case fatality rates with South Asian genomic data over three different timelines during the pandemic. We especially looked into a large number of populations from India and Bangladesh”. Prajival Pratap Singh of the Cytogenics Laboratory at BHU and first author of this study said, “Our result reiterates the unique genetic origin of South Asian populations. A dedicated Genome-wide Association Study on South Asian Covid patients is the need of the hour for us.”