Possible Cumulative Effect of Spice-Consumption on Mortality Rate and the Number of Genomic Variants (Sequence Reads) of SARS-CoV-2: The USA vs. Higher Spice-Intake Countries

Background: The COVID-19 mortality rate of the USA was significantly higher than in countries that traditionally consume spicier diet. This study delves into the intriguing relationship between dietary spice consumption and SARS-CoV-2 virus genomic variants, aiming to shed light on potential factors contributing to differing mortality rates across countries with different amount of spice consumption, years before the pandemic began. Objective: To investigate the possibility that the mortality rate, the number of genomic variants and the type of mutation in the SARS-CoV-2 virus are the results (or cumulative effect) of years of dietary spice-consumption. Methods: Early in the pandemic (up to November 2020), selected ‘Sequence Reads Archive’ or SRA of DNA sequences were downloaded from the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) SRA database (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov) with keyword ‘SARS-CoV-2’. A total 100 samples of DNA sequences from infected individuals of both lower and higher spice-intake countries were analyzed for the number of genomic variants (sequence reads) and the major type of mutations between the two groups (i.e., USA vs. India, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Qatar and Egypt respectively) using bioinformatics platform ‘Galaxy’ (https://usegalaxy.eu/). Results: Data shows that the approximate spice consumption in the USA has been at all-time lower than the other spice-intake countries. In addition, the latter countries have a lower-mortality rate than the USA. Infected individuals from the US also have 15x higher number of variants in the ‘Spike’ protein region of the virus than individuals from higher-spice group. Most of the mutations in the US were of missense-type. In contrast, frameshift-type mutation predominates in the higher spice-intake individuals resulting in apparent lower-mortality rate. Conclusions: It is possible that after long-term consumption of immune-supporting spices as part of regular dietary nutrition, the higher spice-intake nations could be more resistant to the viral infection compared to the people who consumed American diet.