The use of bats to control the mechanisms of viruses in the body may help develop new treatments for diseases such as COVID-19.

!--webeditor: "page title" -- Bats are generally thought to be infected with a number of deadly viruses, including Ebola virus, rabies, SARS-CoV-2 virus esage that causes COVID-19 Although humans experience a variety of adverse symptoms when infected with these pathogens, bats are very resistant to the virus and live longer than land mammals of similar size; the longevity of bats and their ability to tolerate the virus may stem from their ability to control inflammation, which is a sign of disease and aging of the body.
, scientists from the University of Rochester and others have revealed the molecular mechanisms behind the special abilities of bats and how they can help researchers develop new treatments for human diseases,
a study published in the international journal Cell Metabolim entitled "The World Goes Of the Times: Living Longer and Tolerating Viruses."
source: CC0 Public Domain researchers began to study the field of mammalian longevity, and then they began to study bats, which were thought to have originated in bats before SARS-CoV-2 spread to humans, and although bats were carriers, bats did not appear to be affected by the virus, and another factor that puzzled researchers was that, in general, a species had a life-span associated with its life, i.e. the smaller the species, the shorter the lifespan, and vice versa. 'We've been very interested in studying the longevity and disease tolerance mechanisms of bats for a while, but we don't seem to have time to sit down and think about it, and isolation just gives us time to explore the issue, and there seems to be a strong correlation between bat tolerance to infectious diseases and longevity, and bats can provide new clues for the development of new treatments for diseases,' said Gorbunova, a researcher at the
.
so far, many studies have analyzed the immune response of bats, but have also studied the longevity of bats, but have not studied the link between the two phenomena;
for COVID-19, inflammation gets out of hand, and inflammatory reactions may be the cause of death, not the virus itself; the human body's immune system works by pulling the alarm and then the body to alert us to a fever and inflammation, designed to kill the virus and fight infection, but as the body overreacts to the threat, the symptom may be a fatal response.
but bats are not, unlike humans, bats produce a special mechanism to reduce virus replication, but also inhibit the body's immune response to the virus, the result will produce a beneficial balance, that is, the body's immune system in control of the virus, and do not produce a very strong inflammatory response.
there are a number of factors that can help bats evolve to resist viruses and survive longer, one of which is that they fly, and bats are the only mammals that can fly, which requires them to adapt to the rapid rise in body temperature, sudden surges in metabolism and molecular damage that may help them fight disease.
another factor may be the environment, where many bats live in large, dense populations that hang tightly on the top of caves or trees, ideal for the transmission of viruses and other pathogens.
bats will continue to be exposed to viruses, they will always fly out and bring something new to caves or nests, and they will also spread the virus to each other, because bats are constantly exposed to viruses, so that the body's immune system and pathogens will engage in a permanent arms race, i.e. pathogens will enter the body, and the immune system will evolve the mechanisms against pathogens, pathogens will continue to evolve again.
often, the most powerful driver of new features during evolution is an arms race with pathogens, and exposure to these viruses can also shape the bat's immunity and longevity.
, of course, it's not that people are throwing away the masks they wear, crowding together in visits or cinemas, and evolution takes thousands of years, not months, and only in recent history has most of the population started to live near cities, and technology can drive rapid movement of people, cross continents and global travel, and while humans may be forming social habits similar to bats, they have not evolved the complex mechanisms held by bats to cope with the emergence and rapid spread of the virus.
the end result is that the human body experiences more inflammatory manifestations, and now researchers realize that aging appears to play a reverse role in human responses to COVID-19.
coVID-19 has a different pathogenesis in the elderly population, and aging is the most important factor between survival and death, and researchers have to treat aging as a whole rather than just individual symptoms of patients; researchers predict that research into the bat's immune system may provide new targets to help develop new treatments to fight disease and aging, such as a variety of genes that can mutate or completely eliminate inflammation in the human body. If you want to suppress inflammation, live long and avoid the lethal effects of diseases such as COVID-19, humans may have two possible strategies, one of which is to avoid exposure to any virus, but that doesn't seem realistic, and the second is that it regulates the body's immune system like a virus, said Gorbunova, the eventual researcher at the
.
() References: 1. Bats-cook clues to treating COVID-19 !--/ewebeditor: !--webeditor: !--:page title"--2) Vera Gorbunova, Andrei Seluanov, Brian K. Kennedy. The World Goes Bats: Living Longer and Tolerating Viruses, Cell Metabolism (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2020.06.013 !--/ewebeditor.com.