COVID-19: Predictive Immune and Airway Monitoring in Healthcare workers and Hospitalized COVID-19 patients

National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases

Investigators

Abstract

This is a prospective, observational, longitudinal analysis of healthcare workers caring for COVID-19 patients and hospitalized COVID-19 patients at the Veteran?s Administration (VA) hospital in San Antonio, Texas. Through large scale studies in humans and mice, the investigators have developed laboratory and genomic (gene expression) metrics that track the level of two key features that they hypothesize may contribute to the wide heterogeneity of COVID-19 disease severity: (1) impaired immunologic health and (2) loss of airway epithelium integrity and increased airway inflammation. The proposed studies focus on 1) COVID-19 incident cohort consisting of healthcare workers that will be routinely screened/monitored, 2) hospitalized cohort of COVID-19 patients, 3) discharged cohort of those previously hospitalized for COVID-19, and 4) postmortem cohort. The successful completion of this proposal will result in development of precise prognostication metrics to identify those at risk for COVID-19 and its associated outcomes and long-term impact including identification of the primary immune and airway correlates that affect COVID-19 disease course.