{"doi":"10.3389/fgene.2022.911010","title":"Genome-Wide Association Study of COVID-19 Outcomes Reveals Novel Host Genetic Risk Loci in the Serbian Population","abstract":"Host genetics, an important contributor to the COVID-19 clinical susceptibility and severity, currently is the focus of multiple genome-wide association studies (GWAS) in populations affected by the pandemic. This is the first study from Serbia that performed a GWAS of COVID-19 outcomes to identify genetic risk markers of disease severity. A group of 128 hospitalized COVID-19 patients from the Serbian population was enrolled in the study. We conducted a GWAS comparing (1) patients with pneumonia ( n = 80) against patients without pneumonia ( n = 48), and (2) severe ( n = 34) against mild disease ( n = 48) patients, using a genotyping array followed by imputation of missing genotypes. We have detected a significant signal associated with COVID-19 related pneumonia at locus 13q21.33, with a peak residing upstream of the gene KLHL1 ( p = 1.91 × 10 −8 ). Our study also replicated a previously reported COVID-19 risk locus at 3p21.31, identifying lead variants in SACM1L and LZTFL1 genes suggestively associated with pneumonia ( p = 7.54 × 10 −6 ) and severe COVID-19 ( p = 6.88 × 10 −7 ), respectively. Suggestive association with COVID-19 pneumonia has also been observed at chromosomes 5p15.33 ( IRX, NDUFS6, MRPL36, p = 2.81 × 10 −6 ), 5q11.2 ( ESM1, p = 6.59 × 10 −6 ), and 9p23 ( TYRP1, LURAP1L , p = 8.69 × 10 −6 ). The genes located in or near the risk loci are expressed in neural or lung tissues, and have been previously associated with respiratory diseases such as asthma and COVID-19 or reported as differentially expressed in COVID-19 gene expression profiling studies. Our results revealed novel risk loci for pneumonia and severe COVID-19 disease which could contribute to a better understanding of the COVID-19 host genetics in different populations.","journal":"Frontiers in Genetics","year":2022,"id":269065,"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":17,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.8485,"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":931794,"name":"Nikola Kotur","orcid":"0000-0002-9440-9258","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931795,"name":"Bojan Ristivojević","orcid":"0000-0003-0600-7345","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931796,"name":"Vladimir Gašić","orcid":"0000-0001-9589-5502","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931797,"name":"Vesna Škodrić-Trifunović","orcid":"0009-0000-0513-7557","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931798,"name":"Mihailo Stjepanović","orcid":"0000-0003-1787-1438","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931799,"name":"Goran Stevanović","orcid":"0000-0002-3621-4882","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":932318,"name":"Lidija Lavadinović","orcid":null,"position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931800,"name":"Branka Zukić","orcid":"0000-0002-3518-6330","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931801,"name":"Sonja Pavlović","orcid":"0000-0002-2915-1641","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":931802,"name":"Biljana Stanković","orcid":"0000-0002-7571-277X","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":932317,"name":"Marko Zecevic","orcid":null,"position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":59,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-19T00:27:18.142851Z","pmid":"35910207","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":[]}