Paula Boeira, graduated in Biomedicine from Feevale University, is part of the Hepatology Research Group at the University of Plymouth

The graduate of the Biomedicine course from Feevale University, Paula Boeira, who has lived in England for three years, is part of a research group at the University of Plymouth that is on the front lines of combating the new coronavirus. The researchers are analyzing the different immune responses of patients with Covid-19 and are working to develop a simple test that helps predict who will develop a serious illness.

The study, entitled Immune Biomarkers of Outcome from Covid, is conducted by the University of Plymouth’s Hepatology Research Group at the Plymouth NHS Trust (UHP) teaching hospitals. “By analyzing samples taken as soon as patients enter the hospital and then accompanying them as the disease progresses, we seek to identify, at an early stage, who is likely to develop the severe respiratory disease that can be associated with the virus”, Paula explains.

According to the researcher, the study, which started about three weeks ago, is expected to take two to three months. Thirty patients have already been analyzed in a short period of time, requiring approximately two hundred patients to complete this step. According to Paula, some differences have already been noticed between patients and controls, but it is still too early to draw any conclusions.

Paula graduated in 2011 at Feevale and, after a period in which she studied a master's degree in Biomedical Sciences in the Netherlands, moved to England in 2017. She is a PhD student at the Hepatology Research Group at the Faculty of Health from the University of Plymouth. For the graduate, Feevale prepared her very well in the matter of laboratory practice. “It was important, mainly, the final stage inside a hospital, dealing with samples of patients daily, which is what I am doing now in this study. Here, in England, the students do not have many practical classes, so I can say that I left my graduation knowing how to do everything inside a hospital laboratory and this makes a big difference”, she says.