What's Coronagenes?

Coronavirus (COVID-19) is affecting our lives in many ways. Our study aims to use genetics to understand the symptoms and severity of COVID-19.

The chances of getting most illnesses, such as flu or measles, are affected by your environment and genes. The same can be said of coronavirus (COVID-19). Environmental influences include smoking and other lifestyle factors. Genetic influences are passed through the family and are ‘written’ in your DNA.

We aim to discover why some people might get sick from COVID-19 whilst others don't . We also hope to find any genes influencing the severity or duration of disease.  People who have not contracted the disease or had symptoms are just as important to the study as people who have.

Understanding the effect of genes could lead to better ways of preventing and treating infections in the future. Not only is this important for the present COVID-19 pandemic, but it’s likely there will be further epidemics in the future.

We plan to look for genes influencing the risk of catching severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 SARS-CoV-2 and developing COVID-19. We also want to look for genes affecting the severity of symptoms. We’ll do this by studying many people and comparing their symptoms, or lack of symptoms, to their DNA. That is why we would particularly welcome any DNA data you already have as this will help us make speedier scientific discoveries in the current global lockdown.

Please note: We will not be providing any return of personal genetic results. However, we will share combined results from the study through this website, social media and in our newsletters.

The more people we can enrol into the study the greater our research understanding will be. We hope our findings will improve any future treatements or developments for COVID-19.