PrecisionLife and Metrodora Foundation announce confirmation of key genetic findings for long COVID across diverse populations
OXFORD, UK and SALT LAKE CITY, UT — PrecisionLife and Metrodora Foundation have announced the successful reproduction of the genetic risk factors associated with long COVID across US and UK patient populations with diverse ancestries. The landmark study, leveraging PrecisionLife’s unique combinatorial analytics platform, represents a significant step forward in understanding the genetic underpinnings of long COVID and offers a strong foundation for the development of more precise diagnostic tools and therapeutic strategies, pending further clinical validation.
Long COVID is a complex, long-term debilitating condition that affects tens of millions of patients, creating a rising healthcare and lost productivity burden of over $1 trillion (or 1% of global GDP) annually1. However, traditional genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have struggled to identify any reproducible genetic associations, limiting progress in studying the condition. Understanding the specific biological causes of disease in different patients is essential for developing effective diagnostics and personalized treatments.
In a rigorous study, PrecisionLife analyzed data from the US National Institutes of Health’s All of Us Research Program, to reproduce findings from its previous study2 based on data from the UK Sano GOLD long COVID project. Over 88% of the genes identified in the initial study that could be tested were replicated in the All of Us cohort, despite significant ancestry differences between populations.
The findings will enable a much-needed definition of long COVID diagnosis and pave the way for a biomarker-driven diagnostic test that can accurately evaluate an individual’s genetic risk of developing the condition and distinguish it from other post-viral syndromes to guide personalized prevention and treatment strategies.
A definitive diagnostic test for long COVID will facilitate research, help to prioritize healthcare resources and enable clinicians to rapidly and accurately triage patients, ensuring they receive timely and equitable access to treatment, reducing the cost of delivering healthcare and improving patient lives.
“Confirming that we can reproduce long COVID genetic risk factors across populations with different ancestries is a crucial step forward for understanding the disease,” said Steve Gardner, CEO of PrecisionLife. “These findings redefine our understanding of the genetic components of long COVID, laying the foundation for precision medicine approaches that could revolutionize care for millions. They also provide strong support for the use of combinatorial analytics to find exciting new opportunities for precision diagnostics and the accelerated development of targeted therapeutics in complex, chronic diseases that affect billions of lives.”
The study found that 11 out of 13 drug repurposing targets previously identified by PrecisionLife were also observed in the All of Us dataset, strengthening the case for targeted clinical trials to evaluate their efficacy. These findings suggest that the novel insights generated by combinatorial analysis into the mechanisms of complex conditions can be used to prioritize promising existing drugs for rapid clinical validation.
“Patients with complex conditions, like long COVID, simply can’t wait. They are suffering daily. They need solutions, and they need them now,” said Amy Rochlin, Executive Director of Metrodora Foundation. “We care deeply about getting patients the answers they deserve, and we’re committed to driving progress forward with urgency. By combining PrecisionLife’s powerful AI-driven genetic analysis with diverse patient data, we’re gaining critical insights that may bring us closer to real solutions, with the potential to truly improve patients' lives.”
The research was conducted to support the MetX and MELO studies, flagship clinical programs funded by the Metrodora Foundation and run at the Metrodora Institute. These studies aim to build upon PrecisionLife’s discoveries of the mechanisms underlying chronic diseases into real-world clinical applications, with the goal of informing future clinical applications and improving outcomes for patients suffering from conditions with high unmet medical need.
“These results give us hope and drive to continue this important work, empowering clinicians to provide better care and improve the lives of millions,” said Rohit Gupta, Principal Investigator for the MetX and MELO studies at Metrodora Institute. “We are committed to accelerating the development of diagnostics and treatments through our collaboration with PrecisionLife.”
The study has been submitted for publication and is currently available on medRxiv, the pre-print server for health sciences, and can be viewed here.
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ENDS
[1] Al-Aly, Z., Davis, H., McCorkell, L. et al. Long COVID science, research and policy. Nat Med 30, 2148–2164 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41591-024-03173-6.
[2] Taylor, K., Pearson, M., Das, S., Sardell, J., Chocian, K. and Gardner, S., 2023. Genetic risk factors for severe and fatigue dominant long COVID and commonalities with ME/CFS identified by combinatorial analysis. Journal of Translational Medicine, 21(1), p.775.