By Meg Cunningham
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Federal and provincial governments recently awarded $65,000 to two Mount A professors to study COVID-19 treatments and long-term effects.
Dr. Steven Westcott and Dr. Vett Lloyd will each head a research project.
CHMA speaks with Dr. Vett Lloyd, professor of biology, to learn more about her study.
Dr. Lloyd’s specialties include the study of genetics and molecular genetics.
She says that research is paramount during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When coronavirus hit, one of the things the federal government did was put money into research also provincial governments did, which is a really good thing to do. Because aside from coping with the immediate disaster, we need a vaccine, we need better treatments and we need to follow what happens to people who are dealing with the disease. So this is all new. So one of the pressing needs other than just coping and surviving was more information. So there was a ton of money put into research. This was a New Brunswick opportunity. When researchers hear about it, you think well, this is the stuff I’m good at. This is what I can do. With my research group, is there anything I can do that would actually help? And if you can think of something useful you can do to help you write up a grant proposal. This one was delightfully short, send it to them. And if they agree that you could help, then they give you the money to do, ideally all of, or at least part of, the research.”
Dr. Lloyd’s research will focus on the long-term effects of COVID-19 in the body.
“The first step is we’re going to collect the experiences of people who’ve been ill and find out based on their age, their gender or their health in general, what were their experiences? Like some people are very mildly affected, some people have experienced COVID-19 like a really bad flu, and other people are desperately ill, some of them dying. So we’re collecting. When the medical system counts people, obviously they count the people who are most ill because they’re the one showing up in hospital. So we’re collecting all of people’s experiences in terms of what symptoms did you have, how long did it last? From that we’re going to break the people into different groups basically. Mild, serious, really bad, and then go back to them and offer them first of all, extensive blood tests and a full health workup. That’s in collaboration with Horizon Health and our partner there to figure out if there is something else going on with them, that they were really badly affected, but also the opportunity to check in or help us check in with someone a year from now, five years from now to say, “Are you fully recovered? Or are you still having a few symptoms?” And the reason we’re thinking about that is twofold. One is that people are reporting that months after they’ve had the disease, they’re still not back to normal. they’re really fatigued, they can’t concentrate. There’s weird aches and pains in their joints, pains in their muscles. So people differ in how quickly they recover.”
Dr. Lloyd and her team are looking at the 2003 SARS outbreak for reference.
“The COVID-19 outbreak is a new disease in humans. The closest parallels we have is the SARS outbreak and MERS which has Middle Eastern Respiratory Syndrome. Those are both due to similar types of viruses so we can look at them to see what’s the same but also what’s different. Even though there’s similar types of viruses, the deaths that we saw lethality rate from the virus that causes COVID-19 is lower than the other two, but it’s much more infectious. So the result is because more people get sick, the overall death toll is going to be higher from the other two it already is. But for each individual who gets impacted the likelihood of death is lower than with theSARS or MERS virus. So there are parallels, we can look at them to see what’s going on and then start figuring out what’s different and what’s the same.”
Lloyd is concerned with how the long-term effects may impact health care workers and teachers.
“With the SARS outbreak, and that was in 2003, it was a related virus. And those people who were badly impacted and this was primarily healthcare workers who are obviously the most exposed, many of them ended up with chronic disease bad enough that They couldn’t go back to work. So the same is potentially the case here you have healthcare workers who are among the most highly exposed group, the next highly exposed group are likely to be teachers and wheat if we have a big chunk of healthcare professionals and or educators who are suddenly being tipped over into chronic illness that prevents work, that’s going to be a serious issue. So at least we can get ahead of it not in terms of documenting, is it happening yes or no?”
Dr. Lloyd has to jump through a few hoops before beginning her study.
“Well, we’ve The first step of any study that involves people is getting permission to do the study because it has to pass rigorous ethical inspection. So we’ve submitted the study plans to various ethics review boards, they need to be done with Horizon Health and both universities. The review board looks at it to figure out if they’ve got any concerns, we address their concerns. So once that’s in place, which I’m hoping will be by September, then we can start enrolling patients in first the survey where we’re collecting information, and then for a subset where we feel that it would be useful to follow up will offer them the opportunity To provide blood for the survey and participate in along with to administer surveys. So the whole thing we hope to have wrapped up by this winter, so by the end of this winter, January 2021.”
New Brunswickers who have recovered or are recovering from COVID-19 and who wish to take part in the study should get in touch with Dr. Lloyd in September.
