Inside Precision Medicine August 5, 2024
By reanalyzing the AncestryDNA COVID-19 study, researchers have found that many genetic risk factors for COVID-19 and influenza do not overlap. The study found that risk factors for each of these respiratory illnesses do share a common feature—they are linked to cell surface proteins that may be required for viral entry—which, though not surprising, may offer treatment opportunities.
The study’s most promising lead, ST6GAL1, is an enzyme that adds a sialic acid to the cell surface, a linkage that has been previously shown to participate in the entry of the influenza virus into human cells. In this study, knockdown of ST6GAL1 using small interfering RNA (siRNA) reduced influenza infectivity by 57% in vitro. This initial experiment, which was performed using...
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