As researchers around the world try to determine the long-term impacts of COVID-19, data from a regional community in Western Australia is helping unravel the mystery of the virus.
The City of Busselton is not just home to the iconic timber jetty. It's also home to the Busselton Population Medical Research Institute, which holds some of the most detailed community-health data in Australia.
For more than a decade, Busselton researchers have been taking samples and running health checks on volunteer baby boomers at different stages of their lives, to help identify chronic-disease patterns and risk factors.
These samples are now being sent to Murdoch University's Australian National Phenome Centre (ANPC) and compared with data all over the world to try to determine the long-term impacts of COVID-19.
ANPC director Jeremy Nicholson said the city was used as a control group to gauge changes in the human body after contracting the virus.
"The Busselton study is a fantastic study that covers a large number of men and women of the right sort of age to be relevant to COVID.
"We actually have them as background subjects so we can use them as a sort of benchmark for seeing whether or not you've got recovery."
Cardiovascular and diabetes risk
Early findings from Professor Nicholson's study, and other research around the world, shows COVID-19 can increase the risk of heart conditions and diabetes.
"A year after you've had your COVID episode, you can have a much increased cardiovascular risk and the more severe your illness was to start with, the more severe your cardiovascular risk," Professor Nicholson said.
"There's also evidence of new onset diabetes and increased diabetes risk in the general population that's been exposed to COVID.
'It's mind-blowing'
For participants of the long-term health study in Busselton, the idea that their data is being used to answer a question the whole world is wondering is "mind-blowing."
Trudy Lucas, who signed up to the study seven years ago, says she never would have imagined how useful her data would be to researchers all over the world.
"I thought, selfishly, that I would be getting a test on my health that would tell me how I was travelling. I did not know the wider ramifications," she said.
"I think it's absolutely wonderful."
Hopes for follow-up studies
With COVID-19 now more prevalent in Western Australia, including in regional communities, Busselton health study director Michael Hunter hopes to conduct another round of testing on the same baby boomers to see how the virus has impacted on the local population.
"Once members of this cohort go on to be infected by COVID, we can then follow up these people and compare their baseline data with some of the health data that comes about after a COVID infection," Dr Hunter said.
The institute will need at least $3 million to do another round of testing on baby boomers.
