Long ago, our ancestors lived in caves, survived by hunting for their food, and were generally hardier than humans today.
However, a recent study has uncovered a startling revelation – individuals with Neanderthal genes are twice as likely to develop a life-threatening form of Covid.
DNA from the extinct Neanderthals, who vanished around 40,000 years ago, has been linked to autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes, and prostate cancer.
Italian researchers conducted a study and discovered that individuals with three Neanderthal gene variations were twice as likely to experience severe pneumonia and three times as likely to be hospitalized with a ventilator after contracting the virus.
While these findings were obtained through an experiment, individuals can explore their Neanderthal DNA composition by using commercial ancestry tests.
People who have developed life-threatening forms of Covid may have inherited genes from their Neanderthal ancestors, a new study has suggested. Pictured is a statue made to look like a Neanderthal
Neanderthals, our close human ancestors, mysteriously disappeared approximately 40,000 years ago.
They coexisted with early humans in Africa for thousands of years before venturing into Europe around 300,000 years ago.
Later, when humans migrated to Eurasia about 48,000 years ago, they interbred with Neanderthals, resulting in the presence of certain Neanderthal genes in modern-day humans.
The recent study, published in the journal iScience, was led by researchers from the nonprofit Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research.
The team analyzed a sample of nearly 1,200 individuals from Bergamo province, which was the epicenter of the pandemic in early 2020.
Their analysis revealed that 33 percent of individuals in Bergamo with the Neanderthal haplotype, a set of specific DNA variants, developed severe cases of Covid.
In March 2020 alone, 670 people died in this city of 120,000 inhabitants and almost 6,000 in the province of the same name — five or six times the normal toll for that time of year
Over 75 percent of the participants were native to the Bergamo province, which was selected as the sample region due to the high number of severe cases and deaths from Covid.
In March 2020 alone, this city with a population of 120,000 had 670 deaths, and the province had almost 6,000 deaths – five to six times higher than the usual toll for that time of year.
During the experiment, the research team conducted an ORIGN test, which involved analyzing the ancestry of each participant.
The three Neanderthal gene variants were identified on chromosome 3, specifically within the 3p21.31 locus.
‘The lead variant at this locus lies in an intron of LZTFL1 and is in linkage with markers spanning a cluster of inflammatory genes, including CCR9, CXCR6, and XCR1,’ explains the study.
A previous study in 2020 found similar results, indicating that having Neanderthal genes increases the risk of severe Covid.
In a study involving 3,199 hospital patients with coronavirus in Italy and Spain, researchers found that the genetic signature associated with Neanderthal genes was linked to more severe illness.
Lead author Professor Hugo Zeberg from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden stated, “The increase in risk is 60 to 70 percent if you carry one copy of the Neanderthal variant and three times the risk if you have two copies – one from your father and one from your mother. Later studies estimate the risk increase to be even higher, with twice the risk if you have one copy and up to a five-fold increase if you have two copies.”
This particular gene variant was initially discovered in the remains of a Neanderthal in Croatia approximately 50,000 years ago and is still present in millions of individuals today.
However, not everyone possesses this variant. It is most commonly found among people of South Asian ethnicity, with around 50 percent of them carrying it.
This difference in gene presence may contribute to the observed variations in the severity of Covid-19 among different populations.
In Europe, it is less common, with approximately 16 percent of the population carrying the variant, while in Bangladesh, the number of carriers is as high as 63 percent.
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