Using MoBa to understand the COVID-19 pandemic

Summary

This project will follow the spread of Covid-19 disease in Norway over the next few years and try to understand why someone becomes infected and possibly seriously ill.

By utilizing an existing health survey called the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child Survey (MoBa), we will try to understand why someone becomes infected and possibly seriously ill from Covid-19.

The occurrence and consequences of Covid-19 depend on exposure to the virus, but also on the host and environmental factors. This necessitates both basic biological and epidemiological research. It seems that age combined with pre-existing disease is an important explanation for the severity. But even young people without previous illnesses can develop serious illness. For unknown reasons, men are more often hospitalized than women. The effects of socioeconomic background and previous health conditions can be studied using MoBa.

The MoBa data will also be linked to the following health registers:

• KUHR - The database for control and payments of health reimbursement
• NPR – The Norwegian Patient Register
• MSIS - Norwegian Surveillance System for Communicable Diseases
• SYSVAK - Norwegian Immunisation Registry

Here are examples of research questions in the project:

• Estimate the association between host genetic factors and Covid-19 infection (by using MoBaGenetics on HUNT Cloud), including the development of long-term ailments (long COVID)
• Test the hypothesis that obesity increases the risk of severe disease
• Test the hypothesis that smoking increases the risk of severe disease
• Test the hypothesis that other previous diseases, for example asthma and diabetes, increase the risk of severe disease
• Compare the prevalence of mental health problems, for example anxiety, using new questionnaires, with earlier measures of the same problems, and follow these problems over time