The study led research professor Markus Perola of the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL)involves collecting data on more than 3,000 people who were hospitalised with the virus, or, in milder cases, sought coronavirus testing. The survey uses registry data. Sample collection is carried out in collaboration with biobanks. Blood samples are tested for other co-infectious diseases, the severity of the inflammation, and other values that indicate the biological balance of the body.
“There is always talk of different risk groups, but we forget that a large proportion of people at risk of the coronavirus either do not end up in intensive care or do not die of the disease. For example, the mortality rate for people over the age of 80 is around 10 per cent, but several times that number do not die. So what is the difference between these groups? And why do some very overweight people end up in intensive care with the coronavirus, but not others? Our aim is to find the groups at risk to benefit from vaccination the most.”
Another thing that was studied was respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) infection in children under the age of 1. Respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is a ribonucleic acid (RNA) virus that causes millions of respiratory infections worldwide every year. It is a major cause of infections in young children.
“The registry data was used to follow families whose child had been hospitalised after contracting RSV. The study used data related to socioeconomic status, use of intoxicants by the child’s parents, and the child’s birth characteristics.”
According to Perola, this was highly valuable information that was obtained using artificial intelligence. The computer was fed registry data and taught to identify certain features in the dataset.
“This could not be done with anything other than CSC’s sensitive data services and supercomputing environment.”
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ELIXIR is partly funded by the European Commission