{"doi":"10.1002/ppul.26091","title":"Asthma 17q21 polymorphism associates with decreased risk of COVID‐19 in children","abstract":"To the Editor, Infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) in children rarely leads to severe disease. This has been particularly surprising for children with asthma—the most common, chronic inflammatory disease in childhood. We sought to determine predictors for COVID-19 infection and symptomatic illness in children and adolescents, with and without asthma, at risk for SARS-CoV-2 across the epicenter of the ongoing pandemic in New York City (NYC). Data collected from May 2020 through April 2021 during the early pandemic and before vaccine roll-out as part of the ongoing observational SARS-CoV-2 and Pediatric Asthma in NYC (SPAN) urban cohort study of children and adolescents were analyzed. Study participants were recruited during routine New York-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medicine outpatient clinic visits across the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic including general pediatrics, adolescent, pulmonary, and allergy clinics. The study population included participants aged 2–21 years without asthma and those with physician-diagnosed asthma for at least 1 year and at least one of the following: current daily preventive asthma medication use, wheezing in the past year, or an unscheduled healthcare visit for asthma in the past year. Parents/legal guardians of enrolled participants gave written informed consent. Written assent was obtained from participants aged 7–17 years. This study was approved by Institutional Review Boards at Weill Cornell Medicine, New York-Presbyterian Queens, and New York-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital. A comprehensive survey administered to the parent/legal guardian included questions regarding demographics, clinical information, and exposures, specifically as it pertained to COVID-19 illness. Body mass index (BMI) was calculated using the weight data (kg) and dividing it by height (m) squared (kg/m2). Pediatric age and sex-adjusted BMI percentiles were then calculated using the Centers for Disease Control classification category: normal weight (5–84th BMI percentile), overweight (≥85–94th BMI percentile), and obese (≥95th BMI percentile). Blood and nasal biospecimens were collected during the participants' outpatient clinic visits. As variations at the asthma-risk 17q21 locus are associated with ORMDL3 and Gasdermin B expression, in particular the minor risk allele (T) of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs7216389, and strongly linked to childhood asthma and viral triggers for wheezing,1, 2 genotyping of this SNP was performed on extracted DNA using QIAamp DNA blood micro/mini kits (QIAGEN) according to manufacturer's instructions. The SNP genotyping was performed using the TaqMan® SNP Genotyping Assay (SNP ID: rs7216389). Each SNP genotyping reaction was carried out in duplicate. The SNP genotyping reaction was run in a QuantStudio 6 Flex Real-Time PCR System and the data was analyzed using QuantStudio Software (Applied Biosystems). COVID-19 infection was ascertained by positive SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies. Immunoglobulin G antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were determined in plasma by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay using the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein as antigen as previously described.3 Descriptive statistics were calculated to characterize the SPAN cohort (Table 1). Primary outcomes of interest included: (1) positive COVID-19 serology test and (2) symptomatic COVID-19 illness defined as having a positive COVID-19 test and having at least one of the following symptoms—fever, chills, sore throat, cough, body aches, nasal congestion, rhinorrhea, loss of taste, anosmia, shortness of breath, diarrhea, vomiting, rash, and/or COVID toes, or hospitalization. Univariate logistic regression modeling calculated the unadjusted odds ratio (OR) for each of the demographic and clinical factors of interest on both outcomes, independently. A multivariate logistic regression model evaluated the independent effect of ORMDL genotype on developing COVID-19 while controlling fo","journal":"Pediatric Pulmonology","year":2022,"id":283827,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":6,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.96,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2022-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":929410,"name":"Rika Gomi","orcid":null,"position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":929411,"name":"Madeline Young","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":961081,"name":"Geancarlo Jordan","orcid":null,"position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":961082,"name":"Madeline Liongson","orcid":null,"position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":843154,"name":"Andrea Heras","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":280501,"name":"Linda M. Gerber","orcid":"0000-0003-0081-3338","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":354014,"name":"Charlene Thomas","orcid":"0000-0002-7685-0090","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":961083,"name":"Kalliope Tsirilakis","orcid":null,"position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":306733,"name":"Jennie G. Ono","orcid":null,"position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":961084,"name":"Pramod Narula","orcid":null,"position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":253814,"name":"Thomas J. Ketas","orcid":"0000-0001-9380-7716","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":249512,"name":"John P. 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