SNPnexus COVID: Facilitating the analysis of COVID-19 host genetics

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic has demanded an unprecedented scientific response, with researchers collaborating on a global scale to better understand how host genetics can influence susceptibility to coronavirus infection and the severity of COVID-19 symptoms. The number of projects directed towards sequencing patients genomes has increased rapidly during this time with the rate of data generation outpacing the resources available for analysis and biological interpretation of these datasets. SNPnexus COVID is a cutting-edge web-based analytical platform that allows researchers to analyse and interpret the functional implications of genetic variants in COVID-19 patient genomes and to prioritise those that demonstrate clinical utility for the prevention, management and/or treatment of COVID-19. Our resource links to diverse multifactorial datasets and information resources that would require substantial time and computational power to otherwise mine independently. This streamlines biological data interpretation and allows researchers to better understand the multidimensional characteristics of their data. Importantly, SNPnexus COVID is powered by the SNPnexus software and follows its intuitive infrastructure, which precludes the need for programmatic experience in its users. SNPnexus COVID is freely available at https://www.snp-nexus.org/v4/covid/

Investigating mental and physical disorders associated with COVID-19 in online health forums

ObjectivesOnline health forums provide rich and untapped real-time data on population health. Through novel data extraction and natural language processing (NLP) techniques, we characterise the evolution of mental and physical health concerns relating to the COVID-19 pandemic among online health forum users. Setting and designWe obtained data from 739,434 posts by 53,134 unique users of three leading online health forums: HealthBoards, Inspire and HealthUnlocked, from the period 1st January 2020 to 31st May 2020. Using NLP, we analysed the content of posts related to COVID-19. Primary outcome measuresO_LIProportion of forum posts containing COVID-19 keywords C_LIO_LIProportion of forum users making their very first post about COVID-19 C_LIO_LINumber of COVID-19 related posts containing content related to physical and mental health comorbidities C_LI ResultsPosts discussing COVID-19 and related comorbid disorders spiked in early- to mid-March around the time of global implementation of lockdowns prompting a large number of users to post on online health forums for the first time. The pandemic and corresponding public response has had a significant impact on posters queries regarding mental health. ConclusionsWe demonstrate it is feasible to characterise the content of online health forum user posts regarding COVID-19 and measure changes over time. Social media data sources such as online health forums can be harnessed to strengthen population-level mental health surveillance. Article SummaryO_ST_ABSStrengths and limitations of this studyC_ST_ABSO_LIAnalysing online health forum data using NLP revealed a substantial rise in activity which correlated with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. C_LIO_LIReal-time data sources such as online health forums are essential for monitoring fluctuating population health and tailoring responses to daily pressures. C_LIO_LIIt is not yet possible to establish COVID-19 status or whether concerned posters have pre-existing mental or physical health issues, are recovered, or have become unwell for the first time. C_LIO_LIOnline health forums are help-seeking forums, which introduces self-selection bias. C_LI