Grant: Op Grant: Emerging COVID-19 Research Gaps & Priorities - Post COVID-19 condition

Healthcare workers (HCW) have been the most exposed group to the COVID19 virus. It is of utmost importance to better understand the consequence of infection and its aftereffects on their health, as it may impact their ability to dispense healthcare (see an opinion from NIH director: https://directorsblog.nih.gov/?s=long+covid). The symptomatology associated with COVID19 disease varies significantly. The proportion of patients with prolonged symptoms ranges from 10% to more than 50%, but definitive figures remain uncertain while the symptoms' duration has yet to be defined. To date, no solid lead can explain why some symptoms persist in a specific population and who is at risk of long-COVID. With the worldwide number of infections surpassing 125M patients, the proportion of patients living with COVID19 aftereffects represents a substantial group of individuals. We aim to unravel the biological conditions leading to the occurrence of the post-COVID19 syndrome and uncover potential metabolomic and proteomic biomarkers associated with its presence and severity, and those that predict its persistence and development. We need to gain a better understanding of these aftereffects that affect a sizeable proportion of COVID19-infected individuals. The majority of our HCW cohort will be vaccinated before the conclusion of this project, allowing us to ascertain if vaccination attenuates or exacerbates the observed symptomatology. Additionally, we expect within six months to compare our results with those obtained from cohorts infected with specific SARS-CoV-2 variants. After our project, we will have identified the molecular underpinnings of post-COVID19 symptomatology and their related biomarkers.