An infectious disease expert at Dalhousie University will be leading a study aimed at finding out why elderly people are more at risk of severe complications when contracting COVID-19.
Dr. Lisa Barrett said it’s clear seniors, particularly those living in long-term care facilities, have been hit hardest by the novel coronavirus, but why that is isn’t quite known.
“Why their immune system responds differently and doesn’t prevent infection, or how their overall state of health or frailty level can impact their ability to resist COVID-19 is not clear,” she told NEWS 95.7 fill-in host Jordi Morgan.
“The first part of our study looks at people who are, say, 100 who did really well with COVID, or 65 with COVID and didn’t do well at all, and try to understand what the differences are in their immune system that make a successful response or not.”
The study will involve long-term care facility residents in the Halifax area and 356 people have already signed up to participate.
Over the next year, Barrett’s team of experts in frailty research, immunology, virology and clinical infectious disease will also be looking into vaccine effectiveness in the elderly population.
“Although we don’t know the details, immune systems are different in older people and we need to figure that out,” she explained.
Barrett is hoping the results will have implications well beyond the COVID-19 pandemic.
“A great deal of knowledge will be generated about immune systems in older people in general that we have vastly understudied in the past,” she said. “We know infections in older people are one of the leading causes of death, and we don’t really understand that.”
“Adding a frailty lens in here, and also down deep immune cell descriptions is going to help us, not only with COVID-19, but in designing better responses, better treatments and better vaccines for older people.”
Barrett’s team has received $1.9 million in funding for the research from the Government of Canada’s COVID-19 Immunity Task Force.
