Research and Innovation

Clinical variability of COVID-19: Genetics versus environment

Some people develop severe and lethal forms of COVID while most people experience mild forms or remain asymptomatic. To identify the germline genetic variants related to this clinical variability, we are collecting samples from two groups: patients who have died (based on autopsies in collaboration with Prof. Paulo Saldiva’s group at FMUSP) and people who have had close contact with the virus and remained asymptomatic.

The group of asymptomatic -individuals is being collected using discordant couples; that is, couples where one developed symptoms and the other did not. In addition, we are collecting samples from resistant nonagenarians and centenarians, and comparing the concordance between monozygotic and dizygotic twins exposed to SARS-Cov-2.