A team of researchers is getting closer to understanding what makes some people more vulnerable than others to infection and severe complications from Covid-19, which could draw attention to the development of new treatment strategies.
The group’s findings from the Pasteur Institute, the National Institute for Medical Sciences and Research (Inserm), St. James’s Hospital Dublin and Trinity College are published in the journal Nature Communications.
One of the most important new findings of the study is the link between people with severe illness and their difficulty or inability to produce a key antiviral protein called interferon type 1 (IFN-I).
Type I interferon (IFN-I) is an essential component of innate antiviral immune activity and therefore a target for viral intervention strategies.
Previous research has shown that if type 1 interferon is compromised, the viral infection will not be cured. The new work builds on this finding and helps explain why therapeutic administration of type 1 interferon has proven so ineffective.
This recent French-Irish collaboration showed that when type 1 interferon was added to the blood of patients with severe COVID-19, their immune cells were more inflammatory compared to people with milder COVID-19.
“We have known for a long time that people react very differently to COVID-19: some have mild or no symptoms, while others become seriously ill, and some of them die tragically,” says Darag Davi from the Pasteur Institute. . , who is the lead investigator for the project. We are still looking for a fuller picture of why this is so. the use of type 1 interferon in the late stages of infection has proven unsuccessful, despite the fact that many studies have shown how important it is. This protein is present in the early stages of infection.”
The new findings support interferon testing early in the disease and reinforce the need to screen people who respond poorly (either due to genes, antibodies or treatments) to complications from COVID-19 or other acute viral infections.
Knowlage Burke of Trinity College said: “This study reveals important new insights into why inappropriate type 1 interferon responses can be so detrimental in severe COVID-19, helping us better understand biological immune processes.” serious disease”.
Source: Medical Express
