{"doi":"10.1101/2022.02.28.22271562","title":"Genetic Examination of Hematological Parameters in SARS-CoV-2 Infection and COVID-19","abstract":"Abstract Background People hospitalized with COVID-19 often exhibit hematological alterations, such as lower lymphocyte and platelet counts, which have been reported to associate with disease prognosis. It is unclear whether inter-individual variability in baseline hematological parameters prior to acute infection influences risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection and progression to severe COVID-19. Methods We assessed the association of blood cell counts and indices with incident SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19 in UK Biobank and the Vanderbilt University Medical Center Synthetic Derivative (VUMC SD). Since genetically determined blood cell measures better represent cell abundance across the lifecourse, we used summary statistics from genome-wide association studies to assess the shared genetic architecture of baseline blood cell counts and indices on COVID-19 outcomes. Results We observed inconsistent associations between measured blood cell indices and both SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID-19 hospitalization in UK Biobank and VUMC SD. In Mendelian randomization analyses using genetic summary statistics, no putative causal relationships were identified between COVID-19 related outcomes and hematological indices after adjusting for multiple testing. We observed overlapping genetic association signals between hematological parameters and COVID-19 traits. For example, we observed overlap between infection susceptibility-associated variants at PPP1R15A and red blood cell parameters, and between disease severity-associated variants at TYK2 and lymphocyte and platelet phenotypes. Conclusions We did not find convincing evidence of a relationship between baseline hematological parameters and susceptibility to SARS-CoV-2 infection or COVID-19 severity, though this relationship should be re-examined as larger and better-powered genetic analyses of SARS-CoV-2 infection and severe COVID-19 become available.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2022,"id":299861,"datarank":0.20794415416798362,"base_score":1.3862943611198906,"endowment":1.3862943611198906,"self_citation_contribution":0.20794415416798362,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.20794415416798362,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":3,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9528,"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":11263,"name":"Quan Sun","orcid":"0000-0001-8324-2803","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":990474,"name":"Wanjiang Wang","orcid":null,"position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":573715,"name":"Tyne W. Miller‐Fleming","orcid":"0000-0002-0398-5162","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":103608,"name":"Nancy J. Cox","orcid":"0000-0001-9315-0830","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":386560,"name":"Misa Graff","orcid":null,"position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":441249,"name":"Annika Faucon","orcid":"0000-0003-4509-0428","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11245,"name":"Megan M. Shuey","orcid":"0000-0003-2866-3562","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":36502,"name":"Elizabeth Blue","orcid":"0000-0002-0633-0305","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":24941,"name":"Paul L. Auer","orcid":"0000-0003-1735-8044","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":24805,"name":"Yun Li","orcid":"0000-0002-9275-4189","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":17323,"name":"Vijay G. Sankaran","orcid":"0000-0003-0044-443X","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":25010,"name":"Alex P. Reiner","orcid":"0000-0002-1427-4470","position":12,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":11262,"name":"Laura M. Raffield","orcid":"0000-0002-7892-193X","position":13,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":563198,"name":"Bryce Rowland","orcid":"0000-0002-8900-6905","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":61,"raw_metadata":{"citation_network_status":"fetched"},"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:31:49.412501Z","pmid":"35262092","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}