The genetic variant discovered by scientists from the Medical University of Bialystok, which doubles the risk of a severe course of COVID-19, is present in 14 percent. Poles. In Europe, this figure is on average 8-9%. - said prof. Marcin Moniuszko, the head of the project under which the Minister of Health was identified, believes that this partly explains the higher mortality in Poland due to COVID-19.

- It is an important day for the entire Polish science, but most of all a very important day for the medical care system and the health of Poles. We have managed to identify a very important risk element when it comes to falling ill with COVID-19, that is the risk element related to the genetic structure - emphasized Minister of Health Adam Niedzielski. The knowledge will be used to identify people who have a predisposition to severely undergo COVID-19. As he said, the consequence of the discovery of the gene will be the creation of a genetic test, which - like PCR - will allow to quickly identify whether the patient has this gene and whether it is at a higher risk. It is assumed that the test to assess the risk of severe COVID-19 in patients in Poland should be ready by the end of June.

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The minister emphasized that the discovery differentiates population groups and this has its consequences. - Because if this predisposition in one population is much greater, then of course it also means exposure to a greater risk of death, so in this respect identifying this factor is also of great importance - Niedzielski told journalists.

President of the Medical Research Agency, which financed the research, dr hab. Radosław Sierpiński emphasized that at the moment the commercialization stage of the discovery is underway, cases related to the protection of intellectual property and obtaining patents are pending. - So that it stays in Poland, so that this discovery translates directly into specific tests that will be implemented in the health care system within a few months - said Sierpiński.

The tests are to go primarily to hospitals, but it is possible that they will be commercially available in the future, e.g. in pharmacies - then anyone interested could check if they have one of the important factors in the severe course of COVID-19. One of, and more specifically - the fourth in importance. The first three are age, BMI and male gender (the genetic variant is ahead of, according to scientists from Białystok, comorbidities).

The research project started in April 2020. Patients were recruited by clinical centers all over Poland - including Warsaw, Białystok, Bydgoszcz, Bytom, Poznań, Tychy, Kielce. The clinical part of the study was led by prof. Robert Flisiak. The study included almost 1.5 thousand patients with various disease courses - from the lighter to the most severe, ending in a stay in the ICU or death.

Scientists paid attention to the severity of the course of the disease in patients and to comorbidities. - What distinguishes our study from other initiatives in the world is the combination of an extremely detailed clinical description with the examination of all 20,000 genes of COVID-19 patients with disease of varying severity - emphasized the project leader.

The so-called full-exome DNA sequencing. - It turned out that among the genetic variants that were also proposed in the world, some of them, and in fact one of them, are very important in the Polish population. It is a genetic variant that is related to chromosome 3, said Prof. Moniuszko. The occurrence of this variant causes the probability of a severe course of COVID-19 to more than doubled.

The frequency of this variant varies around the world. In Poland, it is estimated at 14%, in Europe at 8-9%, in South Asia (India) at 27%, and in East Asia this risky variant has only a small percentage of the population, similar to Latin America.