COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative

Sly Saint · Mar 29, 2020

From Article:
How sick will the coronavirus make you? The answer may be in your genes
By Jocelyn KaiserMar. 27, 2020 , 3:25 PM

COVID-19, caused by the new pandemic coronavirus, is strangely—and tragically—selective. Only some infected people get sick, and although most of the critically ill are elderly or have complicating problems such as heart disease, some killed by the disease are previously healthy and even relatively young. Researchers are now gearing up to scour the patients’ genomes for DNA variations that explain this mystery. The findings could be used to identify those most at risk of serious illness and those who might be protected, and they might also guide the search for new treatments.

The projects range from ongoing studies with DNA for many thousands of participants, some now getting infected with the coronavirus, to new efforts that are collecting DNA from COVID-19 patients in hard-hit places such as Italy. The goal is to compare the DNA of people who have serious cases of COVID-19 (which stands for coronavirus disease 2019)—but no underlying disease like diabetes, heart or lung disease—with those with mild or no disease. “We see huge differences in clinical outcomes and across countries. How much of that is explained by genetic susceptibility is a very open question,” says geneticist Andrea Ganna of the University of Helsinki’s Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland (FIMM).
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Ganna heads up a major effort to pool COVID-19 patients’ genetic data from around the world. The idea “came quite spontaneously” about 2 weeks ago when “everyone was sitting at their computers watching this crisis,” says Ganna, who is also affiliated with the Broad Institute, a U.S. genomic powerhouse.

He and FIMM Director Mark Daly quickly created a website for their project, the COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, and reached out to colleagues who run large biobank studies that follow thousands of volunteers for years to look for links between their DNA and health. At least a dozen biobanks, mostly in Europe and the United States, have expressed interest in contributing COVID-19 data from participants who agreed to this. Among them are FinnGen, which has DNA samples and health data for 5% of the 5 million–person Finnish population, and the 50,000-participant biobank at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The UK Biobank, one of world’s largest with DNA data for 500,000 participants, also plans to add COVID-19 health data from participants to its data set, the project tweeted this month. And the Icelandic company deCODE Genetics, which is helping test much of the nation’s population to see who is infected with the new coronavirus, has received government permission to add these data and any subsequent COVID-19 symptoms to its database, which contains genome and health data on half of Iceland’s 364,000 inhabitants, says its CEO Kári Stefánsson. “We will do our best to contribute to figuring this out,” Stefánsson says.
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https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/03/how-sick-will-coronavirus-make-you-answer-may-be-your-genes#

the projects website:
https://www.covid19hg.com/

@Chris Ponting

obeat · Mar 29, 2020

Does New York have a high percentage of inhabitants of Italian ancestry?

DokaGirl · Mar 29, 2020

Good question @obeat.

Here is the Wikipedia website info:

New York City has the largest population of Italian Americans in the United States of America as well as North America, many of whom inhabit ethnic enclaves in Brooklyn, the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Americans_in_New_York_City

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