ABSTRACT
BackgroundThe Omicron variant of SARS-CoV-2 is now overtaking the Delta variant in many countries. Results showing that sera from double vaccinated individuals have minimal neutralizing activity against Omicron may indicate that the higher rate of transmission is due to evasion from vaccine-induced immunity. However, there is little information about activation of recall responses to Omicron in vaccinated individuals. MethodsWe measured inflammatory mediators, antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike and nucleocapsid proteins, and spike peptide-induced release of interferon gamma in whole blood in 51 vaccinated individuals infected with Omicron, in 14 infected with Delta, and in 18 healthy controls. The median time points for the first and second samples were 7 and 14 days after symptom onset, respectively. FindingsInfection with Omicron or Delta led to a rapid and similar increase in antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2 spike and nucleocapsid proteins and spike peptide-induced interferon gamma in whole blood. Both the Omicron and the Delta infected patients had a mild and transient increase in inflammatory parameters. InterpretationThe results suggest that vaccine-induced immunological memory yields similar coverage for the Omicron and Delta variants.
ABSTRACT
Given the highly variable clinical phenotype of Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), a deeper analysis of the host genetic contribution to severe COVID-19 is important to improve our understanding of underlying disease mechanisms. Here, we describe an extended GWAS meta-analysis of a well-characterized cohort of 3,260 COVID-19 patients with respiratory failure and 12,483 population controls from Italy, Spain, Norway and Germany/Austria, including stratified analyses based on age, sex and disease severity, as well as targeted analyses of chromosome Y haplotypes, the human leukocyte antigen (HLA) region and the SARS-CoV-2 peptidome. By inversion imputation, we traced a reported association at 17q21.31 to a highly pleiotropic [~]0.9-Mb inversion polymorphism and characterized the potential effects of the inversion in detail. Our data, together with the 5th release of summary statistics from the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, also identified a new locus at 19q13.33, including NAPSA, a gene which is expressed primarily in alveolar cells responsible for gas exchange in the lung.