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[daffodil4] 28/9/2020 12:57

Important detail of the immune response discovered
Two new "Science" publications indicate that type I interferons are a focal point of the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. This also results in new approaches for therapy.
Interferons are cytokines that, as part of the innate immune system, play a central role in the immune response to viral infections. Depending on their structure and the cells in which they are formed, the interferons are divided into different groups. The largest are the Type I interferons, which include interferon (IFN) -a, IFN-ß, IFN-e / t, IFN-?, and IFN-?.
According to two recent publications in the journal Science, type I interferons could be the reason why some people with SARS-CoV-2 infection suffer a more severe course of Covid-19 than others. Both works were written by large collective authors whose members are part of the "Covid Human Genetic Effort". This is an international association of researchers who are specifically looking for genetic characteristics that influence the course of Covid-19.
The first work deals with the appearance of autoantibodies against type I interferons. These were found significantly more frequently in a group of critically ill Covid-19 patients than in a comparison group of SARS-CoV-2 infected people who developed only slight symptoms or no symptoms at all: the researchers demonstrated neutralizing autoantibodies to 101 of 987 critically ill patients Type I IFN after, in 13 against IFN-?, in 36 against IFN-a and in 52 against both. Some patients also had autoantibodies against the other three type I IFNs. In contrast, none of the 663 people in the comparison group had the corresponding autoantibodies, which leads the authors to the conclusion that »the neutralizing [autoantibodies] against type I interferons, like congenital errors in type I IFN production, favor the balance of the virus, ultimately leading to serious illness and inadequate or even harmful innate and adaptive immune responses. "
It is precisely these innate errors in type I IFN production that are the subject of the second publication. She reports on the frequency of loss-of-function mutations in the genes that code for type I IFN and the connection with the severity of Covid 19 disease. For this purpose, the authors subjected 659 hospitalized Covid-19 patients and 534 slightly or asymptomatically infected people to whole genome or whole exome sequencing. They found corresponding mutations in 3.5 percent of the seriously ill, but none of the test subjects in the comparison group. The mutated immune cells did not produce any detectable amounts of type I IFN in response to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Such mutations could explain why some young people without risk factors get seriously ill with Covid-19, the authors conclude.
If the central role of type I interferons in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 is confirmed, this could also be used therapeutically. The interferons should then probably be given as early as po

[festario] 28/9/2020 11:19

Ha... its only Dean Haigh, harmless convicted stalker... just filter like I do.