Forbes December 12, 2020
Why do some people have no symptoms from a Covid-19 infection, and others quickly become septic, develop respiratory failure, and die? We’ve had only a few clues—age, gender, and weight are crude predictors of trouble.
A new multicenter study from the UK sheds more light and brings the promise of new treatments. Dr. Kenneth Baillie, a critical care specialist at the University of Edinburgh’s Roslin Institute, is the project’s chief investigator.
Their discovery, just published in Nature, came to my attention in a remarkably clear Twitter explainer that began:
Baillie then explains how using genetics can help find targeted new therapies. In this case, they found five genes (called LZTFL1, OAS1, DPP9, TYK2, and IFNAR2) that were markedly...
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