Scientists search for genetic key to virus vulnerability

, June 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/
-- Why are some people almost immune to coronavirus infection, while others are seriously ill at a young age?scientists are looking for answers in patients' genes, looking for mutations that affect their immune response, hoping to find new treatmentsAs more and more people develop COVID-19, the general picture of severe patients comes to light: older, potentially ill, men are more likelybut that's not allintensive care units around the world have also treated a small number of people under the age of 50 who do not have any potential medical problemsphoto source: About 5 percent of the patients were from geneticist Jean-Laurent Casanova"Some people could have run a marathon in October 2019, but in April 2020 he was in the intensive care unit, undergoing trachea intubation and ventilation,""
Casanova is the director of the Human Infectious DiseasesGeneticLaboratory, a joint venture between the Imagine Institute in Paris and Rockefeller University in New YorkCasanova wanted to know if they had a rare genetic mutation"Our hypothesis is that the genetic variation in these patients is silent before they encounter the virus, " he said"
Casanova is a co-founder of the COVID Human Genetic Research Project, which studies the genomes of young patients with severe illnesses in China, Iran, Europe, North America and Japan the team also studied people who were still uninfected after repeated exposure to the virus their research is a huge effort worldwide, including dozens of laboratories studying the genomes of PATIENTs with COVID-19 to find mutations that may explain why some people are more serious than others and may help develop antiviral therapies more than just "bad luck" genetic mutations have been found to make people more vulnerable to a range of infectious diseases, from influenza to viral encephalitis they can sometimes provide protection in the mid-1990s, researchers found that some rare mutations in a single gene (CCR5) effectively preventpeople from contracting HIV discovery gives researchers a deeper understanding of how viruses work and paves the way for new treatments In the past, whether a person would become seriously ill because of a disease was often attributed to "bad luck," said Jacques Fellay, a professor at the of Infectious Disease sin
genomics at the Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne, "Today, we have the ability to dissect the genomes of these people to see if they have a rare mutation that makes them particularly vulnerable to the new coronavirus," he said "
but differences in immune response are usually caused by a variety of genetic , " says Fellay, who likens the body's defenses to mechanical watches there may be a grain of sand in the " gear In a group of patients, each of these grains of sand may be different, but the results are the same He said hope of treatment
this complexity means that "we need a very large sample and the ability to replicate and repeat the results to be confident," said Mark Daly, director of the Finnish Institute of Molecular Medicine Daly is one of the scientists at the COVID-19 Host Genetic Initiative, a large-scale global collaborative project involving about 150 research centers the project aims to recruit at least 10,000 patients and share the results of the study he said the researchers hope to get "very useful information" this summer, although time is not guaranteed Picture Source: Ideally, this work will lead to the development of treatments "there are a lot of gene-specific drugs," Daly said "If we find a genetic clue that has led us to the genes that have developed a drug, then we can simply change the use of the drug." "
but the process could be much more complicated Fellay says researchers may find mutations in genes that have not yet developed drugs, which may prolong the time it takes to create treatments or worse, they may find the mutations "inoperable" or that intervention simply has too many side effects , the discovery of the genetic mutation behind the COVID-19 immune response is only the beginning "Genetics is a tool to explore biology, but the resulting treatment has nothing to do with genetic ," he said (BioValleyBioon.com) References: Scientists hunt for genetic key to virus vulnerability patients with the severe sofs of the coronavirus disease son sfod stoe