Scientists trace severe COVID-19 to faulty genes and autoimmune condition https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/29183-severe-covid-19-faulty-genes-autoimmune-condition/
Here's the SMMRY: https://smmry.com/https://www.rockefeller.edu/news/29183-severe-covid-19-faulty-genes-autoimmune-condition/#&SM_LENGTH=10 > More than 10 percent of young and healthy people who develop severe COVID-19 > have misguided antibodies that attack not the virus, but the immune system > itself, new research shows. > > Whether the proteins have been neutralized by so-called auto-antibodies, or > were not produced in sufficient amounts in the first place due to a faulty > gene, their missing-in-action appears to be a common theme among a subgroup > of COVID-19 sufferers whose disease has thus far been a mystery. > > Published in two papers in Science, the findings help explain why some people > develop a disease much more severe than others in their age group-including, > for example, individuals who required admission to the ICU despite being in > their 20s and free of underlying conditions. > > "These findings provide compelling evidence that the disruption of type I > interferon is often the cause of life-threatening COVID-19," says > Jean-Laurent Casanova, head of the St. Giles Laboratory of Human Genetics of > Infectious Diseases at The Rockefeller University and a Howard Hughes Medical > Institute investigator. > > The findings are the first results being published out of the COVID Human > Genetic Effort, an ongoing international project spanning over 50 sequencing > hubs and hundreds of hospitals around the world, co-led by Casanova and Helen > Su at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. > > It soon became obvious that a significant number of people with severe > disease carried rare variants in these 13 genes, and more than 3 percent of > them were in fact missing a functioning gene. > > Further experiments showed that immune cells from these patients did not > produce any detectable type I interferons in response to SARS-CoV-2. > > Examining 987 patients with life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia, they found > that more than 10 percent had auto-antibodies against interferons at the > onset of their infection. > > Biochemical experiments confirmed these auto-antibodies can effectively curb > the activity of interferon type I. In some cases, they could be detected in > blood samples taken before patients became infected; in others, they were > found in the early stages of the infection, before the immune system had the > time to mount a response. > > The team continues to look for genetic variations that may affect other types > of interferons or additional aspects of the immune response in COVID-19 > outliers. -- ↙↙↙ uǝlƃ - .... . -..-. . -. -.. -..-. .. ... -..-. .... . .-. . FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Zoom Fridays 9:30a-12p Mtn GMT-6 bit.ly/virtualfriam un/subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com archives: http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/ FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/
