Association of ACE2 and TMPRSS2 towards COVID-19 susceptibility

Abstract Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome-Corona Virus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) is pneumonia like viral disease which was originated from Wuhan China in 2019. Besides its high morbidity and mortality, a lot of physiological, enzymatic, hormonal and genetic imbalances had also been observed among Corona Virus Disease-19 (COVID-19) patients. The purpose of the present study was the assessment of comorbidities and association of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 ( ACE2 ) and transmembrane protease serine ( TMPRSS ) gene among COVID-19 patients. A total of 300 (healthy control n = 150 COVID-19 n = 150) individuals were sampled and genotyped for ACE2 rs2285666 and TMPRSS rs2070788 SNPs respectively. A total of 92/150 (61.3%) were male infected population, among the various age groups (age group 1: 1–15 yrs; age group 2: 16–30 yrs; age group 3: 31–45; age group 4: 46 and above) where most of the patients were from age group 4 (46 and above) 79/150 (52.7%) followed by age group 3 (31–45) 44/150 (29.3%). Logistic regression analysis showed that among clinical features cough (90%) was observed to be highest followed by fever (80%), sore throat (76%) and shortness of breath (75%). Hypertension (51%), type II diabetes (48.4%), ischemic heart disease (43.3%) history was found to prevalent highly associated with infected individuals. For ACE2 rs2285666, we found disease risk association for both allele and genotype while TMPRSS did not reveal genotype association. It is concluded from the current study that COVID-19 infects majority of male population. ACE2 rs2285666 allele and genotype association was observed with COVID-19 infection and protective association of TMPRSS2 rs2070788 allele towards COVID-19 infection.