Why doesn’t everyone get sick with Covid?
A new study, conducted by an international research team, has shown that probably some people they don’t get sick Of COVID-19 thanks to a particular gene which causes their body, upon contact with the coronavirus, to activate particular immune responses, never seen before, which protect it from infection.
How was the new study conducted?
This is the search called UK COVID-19 Human Challengeled by a team of scientists from Imperial College London, which involved 36 young and healthy peoplewhich they had been deliberately infected with the virus responsible for Covid-19, which had been inserted into their nostrils through a sort of syringe (the nose is full of cells on which SARS-CoV-2 can easily attach).
A procedure that had caused quite a bit of controversy, considering that it was carried out when the pandemic still represented an emergency and vaccines were not yet available.
Of the 36 volunteers, only 16 were then followed in depth to evaluate theirs immune response at the single-cell level. Six of them showed mild symptoms, three developed a transient infection, while seven remained permanently negative.
The authors of the new study analyzed the results of that trial in order to investigate in as much detail as possible the reactions of the human body to exposure to an unknown pathogen and to understand the reasons why only some subjects actually develop coronavirus infection, while others do not despite being exposed to the virus.
The new investigation, called Human SARS-CoV-2 challenge uncovers local and systemic response dynamics and published in the journal Nature, was created by a international team of researchers led by a group of British scholars from the Division of Medicine at University College London and the Wellcome MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute at the University of Cambridge.
What did the authors discover?
From the analysis of the data collected, it emerged that in some study participants one was activated particular immune response unknown until then, which led to the elimination of the virus before it could infect the nasal mucosa and give rise to the infection, probably thanks to the presence of a certain gene.
In detail, it was seen that in some volunteers the pathogenic microorganism was attacked practically instantly by the immune system, but without activating the production of specific antibodies.
To better understand the mechanisms of this response, the researchers sequenced hundreds of thousands of single cells, discovering that in the blood and nasal mucosa of people in whom this defense response was activated, a particularly expressed gene called HLA-DQA2. This is a gene already known in the research world and which in previously conducted tests had already been associated with less severe Covid infections.
Why don’t some people get sick from Covid-19?
The authors of the new research concluded that it is probably an eelevated expression of the HLA-DQA2 gene to trigger the powerful immune response that prevents the virus from taking root in the body and causing the disease.
“These findings shed new light on the crucial early events that allow the virus to gain a foothold or clear it quickly before symptoms develop. We now have a much greater understanding of the full range of immune responses, which could provide a basis for the development of potential treatments and vaccines that mimic these natural protective responses“, the authors stated.
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