Approved Research

Genetic Markers of Susceptibility to COVID-19: Alignment with Antibody Responses and Enhancing Representation of North American and Caribbean Black Populations.

Lay summary

We seek to determine why some individuals have severe forms of COVID-19 illness while others get mild illness even when they have similar degrees of

exposures to the virus and are otherwise healthy. The study involves centres in Canada with collaborations with the Caribbean and the United Kingdom. The latter will be through the UK Biobank where we are interested in data from persons of Black African/Caribbean ancestry. We will sequence the genetic code of study participants, which includes both adults and children. This will enable us to determine if there are alterations in the individual's DNA that predispose to an increased likelihood of getting COVID-19 illness and why they might be more likely to have severe illness.