People with Neanderthal genes are TWICE as likely to develop a life-threatening form of Covid… here’s how to check if you have them

They used to live in caves, hunt for their food and were generally stronger than modern humans.

But a new study shows that if you have Neanderthal genes, you are twice as likely to develop a life-threatening form of Covid.

DNA from the species that went extinct about 40,000 years ago has been linked to autoimmune diseases, type 2 diabetes and prostate cancer.

A team of Italian researchers found that people with three Neanderthal gene variations were twice as likely to develop severe pneumonia and three times as likely to be hospitalized on a ventilator after contracting the virus.

Although the findings were part of an experiment, people can investigate how much Neanderthal DNA they have using commercial ancestry tests.

Neanderthals were a close human ancestor who died mysteriously about 40,000 years ago.

The species lived in Africa for millennia with early humans before moving to Europe about 300,000 years ago.

They were later joined by humans, who entered Eurasia about 48,000 years ago and mated, leading to some genes appearing in humans today.

The new study, published in the journal iScience, was led by researchers at the nonprofit Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research.

The team analyzed a sample of almost 1,200 people in the province of Bergamo, home to the epicenter of the pandemic in early 2020.

Scientists found that 33 percent of people in Bergamo with the Neanderthal haplotype, a set of DNA variants along a single chromosome that are often inherited together, developed severe cases of Covid.

In March 2020 alone, 670 people died in this city of 120,000 inhabitants and almost 6,000 in the province of the same name – five to six times the normal number for that time of year.

More than 75 percent of participants were born in the province of Bergamo, chosen as a sample region due to its severe cases and deaths linked to Covid.

In March 2020 alone, 670 people died in this city of 120,000 inhabitants and almost 6,000 in the province of the same name – five to six times the normal number for that time of year.

The team conducted an ORIGN test during the experiment, which included breaking down the origins of each subject.

The three variants were identified on chromosome 3, known as the 3p21.31 locus.

“The major variant at this locus lies within an intron of LZTFL1 and is linked to markers spanning a cluster of inflammatory genes, including CCR9, CXCR6 and XCR1,” the study reads.

A 2020 study found similar results, showing that having Neanderthal genes could make you more at risk of severe Covid.

In a study of 3,199 hospital patients with coronavirus in Italy and Spain, researchers found that the genetic signature was linked to more severe disease.

Lead author Professor Hugo Zeberg from the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden said: ‘The increase in risk is 60 to 70 percent if you carry one copy of the Neanderthal variant, and three times the risk if you have two copies – one from your father and one from your father. one from your mother.

‘Later studies estimate the risk increase to be even higher, with twice the risk if you have one copy and up to a fivefold increase if you have two copies.’

The gene variant was first found in the remains of a Neanderthal in Croatia about 50,000 years ago and is still found in millions of modern humans.

Not everyone has this variant; the variant is most common among people of South Asian ethnicity, about 50 percent of whom have this variant.

This difference may contribute to the differences in Covid-19 severity observed between different populations.

It is less common in Europe, where about 16 percent of people carry it.

Bangladesh has the highest number of carriers at 63 percent.