Implication of single nucleotide polymorphisms in Interleukin-10 gene (rs1800896 and rs1800872) with severity of COVID-19.

Background: Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is an ongoing pandemic which has emerged as a new challenge for the medical sciences. Severity of COVID-19 is mostly determined with overexpressed proinflammatory cytokines eventually leading to endothelial dysfunction causing vital organ injury, especially in the lungs. It has been postulated that various genetic mutations might be associated with an increased risk of disease severity in COVID-19. This study was thus carried out to determine the association of rs1800896 and rs1800872 genetic polymorphism in IL-10 gene in determining COVID-19 severity.

Methods: The study included 160 RT-PCR confirmed COVID-19 patients with mild (n = 85) and severe (n = 75) conditions. All subjects were genotyped for Interleukin-10 (rs1800896 and rs1800872) gene polymorphisms using PCR-RFLP technique followed by statistical analysis.

Results: This study found a significant gender and age-based discrepancy in COVID-19 severity with 1.85-and 3.81-fold increased risk of COVID-19 in males of mild and severe groups as compared to females (p = 0.046 and p < 0.001) and 4.35-fold high risk in subjects ≥ 50 (p < 0.001). Genotyping analysis showed that IL-10 (rs1800872) gene polymorphism was strongly associated with COVID-19 severity (p = 0.01) whereas, IL-10 rs1800896 polymorphism was not found to confer the risk of COVID-19 severity in our population.

Conclusion: In this regard, the present study provided an evidence that IL-10 (rs1800872) gene polymorphism is strongly associated with COVID-19 severity and CC genotype confer a protective role in preventing severe disease progression. More detailed studies with a larger sample size on the genetic variations are required to establish the role of studied IL-10 gene polymorphisms with COVID-19 severity.