The COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative, a global initiative to elucidate the role of host genetic factors in susceptibility and severity of the SARS-CoV-2 virus pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic is a global crisis creating severe disruptions across the economy and health system. Insights into how to better understand and treat COVID-19 are desperately needed.

Early studies have focused on the clinical characteristics [1,2,3], epidemiology [1, 4, 5], and genomic characterization [6,7,8] of SARS-CoV-2 infection. These studies have also highlighted the value and importance of transparent data sharing across countries, which have enabled the live tracking of the disease widespread worldwide [9, 10]. The role of host genetics in impacting susceptibility and severity of COVID-19 has been less studied. Previous work has supported the role of human leukocyte antigen (HLA) in susceptibility [11] and severity [12] for several viral infections. Moreover, a synonymous variant in the IFN-induced transmembrane protein-3 gene has been reported to cause severe clinical outcomes in patients infected with H7N9 and H1N1 influenza viruses [13, 14], although results did not reach established P value thresholds (P < 5 × 10−8). In addition, candidate variant studies have suggested host factors that are critical for severe disease in other coronavirus infections, such as infections due to the related SARS-CoV [15].

Given the importance and urgency of exploring the role of the host genome in conjunction with COVID-19 clinical and genomic variability, and the recognition that this can only be achieved with the combined effort of the scientific community, we launched the ‘COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative’. This initiative brings together the human genetics community to generate, share, and analyze data to learn the genetic determinants of COVID-19 susceptibility, severity, and outcomes. Such discoveries could help to identify individuals at unusually high or low risk, generate hypotheses for drug repurposing, and contribute to global knowledge of the biology of SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease. The initiative has three main goals:

1.
Provide an environment to foster the sharing of resources to facilitate COVID-19 host genetics research (e.g., protocols, questionnaires).

2.
Organize analytical activities across studies to identify genetic determinants of COVID-19 susceptibility and severity.

3.
Provide a platform to share the results from such activities, as well as the individual-level data where possible, to benefit the broader scientific community.