Researchers put together a database which may advance research into factors contributing to respiratory illness severity. Credit: National Cancer Institute
Key points:
- Researchers used longitudinal cohort data to better visualize characteristics, infection events and illness severity factors for respiratory infections in NYC.
- A better understanding of host response, host genetic makeup and bacterial coinfections is required to develop effective therapeutics.
- The data is now in a publicly accessible database on The Virome of Manhattan Project: Virome Data Explorer website.
Since the pandemic, respiratory infections have worsened in severity and spread, becoming a significant public health concern. But even before that respiratory infections were a huge health problem, especially for the young, elderly and those with preexisting conditions.
Trying to get a better handle on the infections, researchers at Columbia University have used longitudinal cohort data to create an interactive, publicly available website to visualize cohort characteristics, infection events and illness severity factors.
Viral respiratory infections may lead to severe outcomes. However, better understanding of host response, host genetic makeup, and bacterial coinfections is required to develop effective therapeutics.
For the study, published in PLOS Biology, researchers surveilled respiratory viruses for 19 months between 2016-2018 in New York City. They analyzed over 800 nasopharyngeal samples with clinical data, including self-reported symptoms from 214 participants. From this data, they created the The Virome of Manhattan Project: Virome Data Explorer database. Users can access cohort data to visualize and analyze changes and patterns in infections, symptoms and illness outcomes.
“This is a resource paper aimed at characterizing the host response to common and often asymptomatic viral respiratory infections,” said the authors.
While the database shares important cohort data related to infections, symptoms, and gene activity, the project has several limitations. Adults over the age of 65 were excluded from the cohort, even though they are likely to be impacted more severely. Ages of children under 10 were not stratified, obscuring symptom and illness information specific to infants, another high-risk demographic. Vaccination status, immunocompromised conditions, and medicine uptake during infection course were also not among the data collected from study participants, which may limit the applications of the Virome Data Explorer.