Dr Fergus Hamilton and co-authors from the University's MRC Integrative Epidemiology Unit (MRC IEU), in collaboration with colleagues at the universities of Edinburgh, Oxford, Cardiff and Imperial College London, reveal that the same variants are present in humans today and providing similar protection against not only bubonic plagues but also other infections including pneumonia and COVID-19. However, this is a situation of balance, and the same genetic makeup is likely to be linked with increases in various autoimmune diseases.
They looked at infection, autoimmune disease, and parental longevity across participants in three large contemporary genetic studies (UK Biobank, FinnGen, and GenOMICC). They used Mendelian Randomization to find associations between variation in the ERAP2 gene and risk of autoimmune disease and infection.
Their findings point to antagonistic effects across these two groups of diseases driven by pressures likely to be more or less present in different human eras.
Paper: 'Variation in ERAP2 has opposing effects on severe respiratory infection and autoimmune disease' by Fergus Hamilton, George Davey Smith, Nicholas J Timpson, et al. in The American Journal of Human Genetics [open access]