Host Genomics and COVID-19: Implications for Clinical and Public Health Practice

Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, we explored the rationale for host genomic studies to our understanding of COVID-19 occurrence and outcomes. More than two years into the pandemic, many academic research groups and consortia have launched worldwide open-science collaborations, featuring shared resources and rapid dissemination of research findings. Large-scale studies, encompassing both rare inborn errors of immunity, and common genetic variants, have used different study designs and multiple disease phenotype definitions to identify several genomic regions associated with COVID-19. Along with multiple follow-up studies, these findings have increased our understanding of disease etiology and provided routes for management of COVID-19.  Emerging opportunities include the clinical translatability of genetic risk prediction, the repurposing of existing drugs, exploration of variable host effects of different viral strains, study of inter-individual variability in vaccination response and understanding the long-term consequences of SARS-CoV-2 infection.

This seminar will review our emerging knowledge of the role of host genomic factors in the susceptibility and outcomes of COVID-19 infection, response to vaccines and treatments as well as long-term sequels of the disease. Our speakers will discuss implications of such knowledge for clinical and public health practice and how this information could be used in the control of the pandemic, and more generally in the control of infectious diseases.