Strong Correlation between the Case Fatality Rate of COVID-19 and the rs6598045 Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) of the Interferon-Induced Transmembrane Protein 3 (IFITM3) Gene at the Population-Level

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a fatal pandemic disease that is caused by infection with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). As of 13 December, 2020, over 70,000,000 cases and 1,500,000 deaths have been reported over a period of several months; however, the mechanism underlying the pathogenesis of COVID-19 has not been elucidated. To identify the novel risk genetic biomarker for COVID-19, we evaluated the correlation between the case fatality rate of COVID-19 and the genetic polymorphisms of several potential COVID-19-related genes, including interferon-induced transmembrane protein 3 (<i>IFITM3</i>), the angiotensin I converting enzyme 2 (<i>ACE2</i>) gene, transmembrane protease, serine 2 (<i>TMPRSS2</i>), interleukin 6 (<i>IL6</i>), leucine zipper transcription factor-like protein 1 (<i>LZTFL1</i>), and the <i>ABO</i> genes, in various ethnic groups. We obtained the number of COVID-19 cases and deaths from the World Health Organization (WHO) COVID-19 dashboard and calculated the case fatality rate of each ethnic group. In addition, we obtained the allele distribution of the polymorphisms of the <i>IFITM3, ACE2, TMPRSS2, IL6, LZTFL1,</i> and <i>ABO</i> genes from the 1000 Genomes Project and performed Log-linear regression analysis using SAS version 9.4. We found different COVID-19 case fatality rates in each ethnic group. Notably, we identified a strong correlation between the case fatality rate of COVID-19 and the allele frequency of the rs6598045 single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) of the <i>IFITM3</i> gene. To the best of our knowledge, this report is the first to describe a strong correlation between the COVID-19 case fatality rate and the rs6598045 SNP of the <i>IFITM3</i> gene at the population-level.