Researchers analyzed 166 serum samples from 33 COVID-19 patients, measuring total Se and the Se -carrying protein SELENOP. Compared to a large European reference population, COVID-19 patients showed significantly lower levels of both Se (50.8 vs. 84.4 μg/L) and SELENOP (3.0 vs. 4.3 mg/L). Alarmingly, over 40% of the samples were below the 2.5th percentile of the normal range (Moghaddam et al., 2020). The gene discussed is SELENOP; the disease is COVID-19.