How Our Neanderthal Genes Affect the COVID-19 Mortality: Iran and Mongolia, Two Countries with the Same SARS-CoV-2 Mutation Cluster but Different Mortality Rates

Neanderthal genes possibly gave modern human protection against viruses. However, a recent study revealed that that a long sequence of DNA that is inherited from our Neanderthal ancestors can be linked to severe COVID19 infection and hospitalization. Substantial evidence now indicates that our genetic background may be involved in the transmissibility of SARSCoV2 and the rapid progress of COVID19 in some infected individuals. Although both morbidity and mortality of COVID19 strongly depends on key factors such as age and coexisting health conditions, potential classes of human genomic variants possibly affect the likelihood of SARSCoV2 infection and its progress. Despite Iran and Mongolia seem to share the same SARSCoV2 mutation cluster, the COVID19 mortality rates in these two countries are drastically different. While the population in Iran is 25.8 times higher than that of Mongolia, the number of confirmed cases is 1170 times higher. Moreover, the death rate shows a drastic difference. Since Neanderthals interbred with modern humans in Middle East between 47,000 and 65,000 years ago before going extinct 40,000 years ago, some Iranians have much more Neanderthal DNA than other people. Although neither genetic background nor environmental factors alone can determine our risk of developing severe COVID19, our genes clearly affect both the development and progression of infectious diseases including COVID19. Given these considerations, we believe that these great differences, at least to some extent, can be due to the proportion of Neanderthal genes among the people of these two countries.