Human leukocyte antigen susceptibility map for SARS-CoV-2

Austin Nguyen; Julianne K David; Sean K Maden; Mary A Wood; Benjamin R Weeder; Abhinav Nellore; Reid F Thompson

Recently, a new strain of betacoronavirus (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, or SARS-CoV-2) has emerged as a global pathogen, prompting the World Health Organization in January 2020 to declare an international public health emergency (2) . In the large coronavirus family, comprising enveloped positive-strand RNA viruses, SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh encountered strain that causes respiratory disease in humans (3) ranging from mild --the common cold --to severe --the zoonotic Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS-CoV) and Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS-CoV). As of April 2020, there are over one million presumed or confirmed cases of coronavirus disease worldwide, with total deaths exceeding 50,000 (4) . While age and many comorbidities, including cardiovascular and pulmonary disease, appear to increase the severity and mortality of COVID-19 (5-10) , approximately 80% of infected individuals have mild symptoms (11) . As with SARS-CoV (12, 13) and MERS-CoV (14, 15) , children seem to have low susceptibility to the disease (16) (17) (18) ; despite similar infection rates as adults (19) only 5.9% of pediatric cases are severe or critical, possibly due to lower binding ability of the ACE2 receptor in children or generally higher levels of antiviral antibodies (20) . Other similarities (21-23) including genomic (24, 25) and immune system response (26-34) between SARS-CoV-2 and other coronaviruses (35) , especially SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, are topics of ongoing active research, results of which may inform an understanding of the severity of infection (36) and improve the ongoing work of immune landscape profiling (37) (38) (39) (40) (41) and vaccine discovery (29, 38, [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47] [48] [49] .