HLA-C and severe acute respiratory syndrome: Recent studies have suggested that genes of the MHC HLA Class I or those in linkage disequilibrium with HLA may play a role in the pathogenesis of coronaviruses, including the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and the 2019 SARS-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) strain that is responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.