Certain gene variants were more common among COVID-19 patients in intensive care, a team of scientists in Europe recently found. Published Friday in Nature, their research boosts previous studies that suggested genetic makeup plays a role in the severity of coronavirus infections, The Washington Post reports.
In what's known as a genome-wide association study, the scientists compared the genes of 2,000 COVID-19 patients in intensive care units across the United Kingdom and compared them to healthy people. It's not the first study to look into the matter, but it's considered "the biggest published to date of its kind."
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