BQC19
Tremblay et al.
PLoS ONE 16(5): e0245031
This publication from the BQC19 Steering Committee describes the process that led to the creation of the BQC19, and could act as a blueprint for developing COVID-19 biobanks.
Collaborators
Paranjpe et al.
Commun Med 3, 81 (2023).
Published: 12 juin 2023
Chen‑Yang Su et al.
Scientific Reports volume 13, Article number: 6236 (2023)
Published: 17 April 2023
Pamela Tanguay · Simon Décary · Samuel Lemaire‑Paquette · Guillaume Léonard · Alain Piché Marie‑France Dubois · Dahlia Kairy · Gina Bravo · Hélène Corriveau · Nicole Marquis· Michel Tousignant ·Michaël Chassé · Livia Pinheiro Carvalho
Quality of life (Springer Nature), 2023: accepted 15 March 2023
Yoshiji et al.
Nature Metabolism | Volume 5 | February 2023 | 248–264
Published: 20 February 2023
Ina Maltais-Payette, Fannie Lajeunesse-Trempe, Philippe Pibarot, Laurent Biertho
and André Tchernof
Metabolites 2023, 13, 201
Arjun Baghela, Andy An, Peter Zhang, Erica Acton, Jeff Gauthier, Elsa Brunet-Ratnasingham, Travis Blimkie, Gabriela Cohen Freue, Daniel Kaufmann, Amy H. Y. Lee, Roger C. Levesque & Robert E. W. Hancock
Scientific Reports volume 13, Article number: 1247 (2023)
Mark H. Ebell, Robert P. Lennon, Derjung M. Tarn, Bruce Barrett, Alex H. Krist, Huamei Dong, Xinyan Cai, Arch G. Mainous, Aleksandra E. Zgierska, Wen-Jan Tuan and Munish Goyal
The Annals of Family Medicine November 2022, 20 (6) 548-550
Maxime Gallant MD , Christine Rioux-Perreault BSc , Samuel Lemaire-Paquette MSc, Alain Piché MD, MSc
Journal of the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada, Volume: 7, Issue: 4, November 28, 2022
Little is known about the prevalence of post COVID-19 conditions (also called “Long COVID”) or the effect of vaccination on post-acute outcomes of COVID-19. In addition, how Delta variant infection severity compares between fully vaccinated versus unvaccinated individuals is unknown. In this prospective study, Alain Piché’s research team (Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Sherbrooke) studied a cohort of 138 individuals with a SARS-CoV-2 infection (Delta variant) enrolled in the BQC19 over a period of three months in 2021. Of those 63% were vaccinated and 37% were unvaccinated. The majority (94%) had mild COVID-19 illness. The occurrence of post COVID-19 conditions was similar in both vaccinated and unvaccinated people. The researchers also found that having had an acute COVID-19 infection was an independent risk factor for developing post-COVID-19 conditions and having received a COVID-19 vaccin did not decrease the risk of developing post-COVID-19 symptoms. These findings have important implications for provincial services planning and highlight the need to develop alternative strategies to prevent post-COVID-19 conditions.
Maxime Gallant MD , Christine Rioux-Perreault BSc , Samuel Lemaire-Paquette MSc, Alain Piché MD, MSc
J Assoc Med Microbiol Infect Dis Can. 2023 Mar 1;8(1):57-63. doi: 10.3138/jammi-2022-0026. eCollection 2023 Mar.
Persistent post-COVID-19 symptoms pose an important health care burden. The Omicron variant has infected millions of people and the potential for many of these people to develop persistent symptoms is a major public health concern. The aim of this study, conducted in Alain Piché’s laboratory (Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Sherbrooke) on BQC19 participants recruited between December 2021 and April 2022, was to determine the prevalence and risk factors of post-COVID-19 symptoms (also called “long COVID”) associated with Omicron. Of the 290 individuals recruited, 47% reported symptoms at least 1-month post-infection. In addition, the number of symptoms during acute COVID-19 was identified as a risk factor for post-COVID-19 symptoms. This is the first study reporting the prevalence of post-COVID-19 symptoms associated with Omicron in Canada. These findings will have important implications for provincial services planning.
Butler-Laporte et al.
Clin Proteom 19, 34 (2022)
Blood samples of patients affected by COVID-19 show many changes in levels of proteins related to immune response, such as cytokines, but little is known about how these levels change over the course of infection. In this collaborative research study led by G. Butler-Laporte in B. Richards’ lab, samples collected by the BQC19 from 333 individuals at the Jewish General Hospital (Montreal) and the Centre hospitalier de l’Université de Montréal, and 247 samples collected by the Mount Sinai COVID-19 Biobank (New York City), were analyzed using the SomaScan® state-of-the-art technology to measure 147 different proteins during acute COVID-19. When combined with results obtained in previous studies, the researchers showed that COVID-19 was associated with clear changes in 69 of these proteins. Importantly, three of them may help explain why men and women respond differently to the disease. These results bring a better understanding into the immune response to COVID-19 and how it leads to severe disease in some individuals.
The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, Butler-Laporte et al.
PLOS Genetics, November 3, 2022
Michael Hultström et al.
Crit Care 26, 322 (2022)
COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative
Nature, August 3, 2022
Kousathanas et al.
Nature, March 7, 2022
Fallerini et al.
Hum Genet 141, 147–173 (2022).
Butler-Laporte et al.
PLoS Med, June 1, 2021
Butler-Laporte et al.
International Journal of Epidemiology, Volume 50, Issue 1, February 2021, Pages 75–86
Kosmicky et al.
The American Journal of Human Genetics108, 1350–1355, July 1, 2021
Huffman et al.
Nat Genet (2022).
Elsa Brunet-Ratnasingham et al.
Science Advances, in press, October 2021
Despite advances made in COVID-19 management, it is still challenging to accurately predict which patients will be at higher risk of dying. Having this ability would help to better understand which patients will need to be targeted for early interventions. To identify early biological predictors of mortality, the team, led by the CHUM’s Daniel Kaufmann, measured a series of potential biomarkers on plasma samples that had been collected from 279 hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Kaufmann’s team, which includes PhD candidate Elsa Brunet-Ratnasingham, looked at mortality, in a first group of study participants to identify the strongest biomarkers and in two others, which they used to validate the results. They found that the level of RNA from the virus SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, when coupled with age and sex, could accurately identify patients most likely to die from the disease. The results of this research could help to better understand the differences observed in how patients respond to COVID-19 and could help identify those who would benefit from novel therapies.
The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, Nakanishi et al.
J Clin Invest. 2021; Online ahead of print.
Gundula Povysil et al.
J Clin Invest. 2021;131(14):e147834
Brent Richards is co-corresponding author in this study in which sequencing of the whole genome or of the exome (part of the genome that contains genes) sequencing was carried out on close to 2,000 COVID-19 patients and more than 15,000 controls, using samples collected by four COVID-19 biobanks including the BQC19. Looking at genes associated with the interferon pathway, researchers did not identify any association between the severity of the disease and the loss of function in 13 rare genetic variants, unlike what was proposed in a recent report.
The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative
This paper describes a meta-analysis of three GWAS studies carried out on more than 50,000 COVID-19 patients, which included participants from the BQC19. Conducted by an international consortium, the meta-analysis led to the identification of 15 chromosome regions (loci) associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection or a severe disease. This international collaboration represents an important model for future genetic discoveries, particularly during pandemics.
Rébillard et al.
J Clin Invest. 2021;131(8):e145853
A Centre de recherche du CHUM team of researchers, led by Catherine Larochelle, has shown that a group of alterations to the immune system is specifically linked to the SARS-CoV-2 infection and to COVID-19 severity. These findings could be used to identify patients who are most at risk of developing severe forms of the disease and could lead to new therapeutic approaches to COVID-19.
Zhou et al.
Nature Medicine volume 27, pages659–667 (2021)
The Jewish General Hospital’s Brent Richards led a team that has shown that high levels of the OAS1 protein are associated with reduced mortality and less severe COVID-19. Therefore, the OAS1 protein protects against COVID-19 susceptibility and severity. Since therapies to increase OAS1 levels are currently in preclinical development, the present findings could add to new treatments available to COVID-19 patients.
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Modeling consent in the time of COVID-19
Knoppers et al.
Journal of Law and the Biosciences, 1–6, doi:10.1093/jlb/lsaa020
Responding to the COVID-19 pandemics requires new research and data-sharing approaches. This publication explores different consent strategies for recruiting participants to COVID-19 biobanks and proposes an access model that could be adapted to situations with different local, legal and ethical requirements while supporting transparent and open science.
Currently in pre-publication, awaiting peer-review
Yiwei Xiong, Jingtao Wang, Xiaoxiao Shang, Tingting Chen, Gregory Fonseca, Simon Rousseau, Jun Ding
bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.01.24.525413
The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, Andrea Ganna
medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.12.24.22283874
William Ma, Antoine Soulé, Katelyn Yixiu Liu, Catherine Allard, Salman Qureshi, Karine Tremblay, Simon Rousseau, Amin Emad
medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.11.02.22281834
Soulé A., Ma W., Liu KY, Allard C., Qureshi S., Tremblay K., Emad A and Rousseau S
medRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.03.09.23286797
Julian Daniel, Sunday Willett, Tianyuan Lu, Tomoko Nakanishi, Satoshi Yoshiji, Guillaume Butler-Laporte, Sirui Zhou, Yossi Farjoun, J. Brent Richards
medRxiv 2023.05.29.23290694; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2023.05.29.23290694