A strand of Neanderthal DNA inherited by modern humans has been linked to your likelihood of falling severely ill with Covid-19, but not everyone is convinced.
The Neanderthal gene is only found in some people on the planet. A strand of DNA that modern humans inherited from the Neanderthals has been identified in a new paper published in Nature. The paper says, the Neanderthal gene “increases the risk of developing severe Covid-19.”
According to lead author, Hugo Zeberg, an assistant professor at the Karolinska Medical Institute in Stockholm, and his co-author, Svante Pääbo, director of the Max Planck Institute of Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, the strand of DNA that was passed on from Neanderthals to modern humans “triples the risk of developing severe Covid-19.” However, there are skeptics who suggest the Neanderthal gene we carry cannot really explain the complex nature of Covid-19 and doesn’t account for all the factors.
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