Interviews with Leaders Responding to the COVID-19 Epidemic

June 11, 2020 —

As experts in observational cohort studies in HIV, how has your prior experience influenced the design of your studies in COVID-19?

Dr. Peluso: Our work with the UCSF HIV SCOPE cohort and performing translational infectious diseases studies helped provide the experience and infrastructure needed to efficiently develop these COVID-19 cohorts as the epidemic was unfolding. When it became clear that COVID-19 would become a pandemic, we quickly pivoted our HIV study infrastructure to recruit COVID-19 positive individuals with the overall goal of understanding the determinants of COVID-19 severity and long-term sequelae of COVID-19. The experienced clinical research staff and the rich collaborations with investigators from within UCSF and across the country allowed us to make this transition smoothly. Our experience with HIV taught us that carefully constructed and deeply characterized observational cohorts with longitudinal follow up are of real value in understanding complex diseases and allowed us to have a head start in implementing these studies.

Can you please briefly describe the overarching goals of your study?

Dr. Peluso: The Long-term Impact of Infection with Novel Coronavirus (LIINC) study is a prospective observational cohort of COVID-19 convalescence. The major immunologic goal of the study is to characterize the humoral and cellular immune responses to COVID-19 over the two years after the initial infection and to determine whether these responses are durable and protective. Our primary virologic goal is to determine whether individuals who had prior COVID-19 continue to shed into the chronic phase and whether it is possible for them to get re-infected, as determined by a documented repeat infection or a substantial change in the immune response. We also have a strong interest in characterizing the long-term sequelae of acute infection which includes both biomedical and psychosocial sequelae.

What are two of the questions you are most excited to see answered by your studies?

Dr. Peluso: Beyond characterizing the immune response over time, LIINC is particularly interested in determining whether the potency or durability of that response will differ between subpopulations. I am personally quite interested in whether the immune response in those with asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 or people with HIV and SARS-CoV-2 co-infection will differ from that in the general population. ◼︎

Dr. Michael Peluso is an infectious disease fellow at UCSF. He serves as the LIINC clinical lead and a principal co-investigator of the study.