Scientists are close to understanding why the new coronavirus kills some and spares others.
Lucky for those who have group I
It seems that the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 - the culprit of the pandemic, the dangerous infectious disease COVID-19, still acts selectively. At a minimum, depending on the blood types of potential victims. Although it is possible that they - the victims - were initially more susceptible to infection. At the genetic level. The data that comes from research teams shows both.
Scientists from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences took blood samples from 2,173 patients from three hospitals in Shenzhen and Wuhan with a confirmed diagnosis of COVID-19. Almost 38 percent of them had blood group II (A). The share of other groups barely exceeded 25 percent. Group I patients (0) were in the minority.
The researchers also took tests from 206 deceased patients. 85 of them had II blood group. This is a 41 percent share.
The results were convincing to the Chinese. They published them in the MedRxiv preprint library and concluded that people with blood group II are most vulnerable to their Chinese coronavirus. Such and the disease are harder than others.
The most persistent are those with group I. The rest are somewhere in between.
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By the way, doctors from Hong Kong noticed a similar pattern back in 2002. They assured that the SARS-CoV virus - SARS - also prefers those with II blood group.
“Questions of blood are the most difficult questions in the world,” Koroviev, one of the heroes of the novel “The Master and Margarita,” said prophetically, albeit on a slightly different occasion.
Potential patients were slightly reassured by Gao Yungdai, a blood specialist at the State Key Laboratory of Experimental Haematology in Tianjin. According to her, which is quoted by the South China Mornig Post, the research of her colleagues was not extensive enough to be considered completely convincing. They say that more than 2 thousand people is of course a lot, but vanishingly small compared to the total number of cases (there are already more than a million of them - ed.).
Gao explains: blood group II is by no means a sentence, and I is not an absolute guarantee against infection. It is necessary to protect yourself by both of them - at least, wash your hands more often.
Any discovered pattern needs additional confirmation.
Life-saving DNA exists
In some countries there are more patients than in others - the USA, Italy, Spain - these are sad examples. A similar situation - the clinical picture, as doctors say, gives them reason to assume that some people are more susceptible to coronavirus infection than others. Genetically susceptible. In some - healthy young people - SARS-CoV-2 easily penetrates cells, in others it is difficult. Some do not even notice that they are sick, while the virus “knocks down” others so that they end up in intensive care. What's the matter here?
Most geneticists are sure that the phenomenon is associated with some special parts of the DNA of these people. But with which ones?
Scientists have already asked themselves this question, considering it a key one. The answer has not yet been received, but extensive research has begun. They involve large genetic data banks, including the British one - one of the "richest" in the world - and leading research institutes from different countries. For example, the Finnish Institute of Molecular Medicine of the University of Helsinki (University of Helsinki's Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland), the American Broad Institute, Harvard and Stanford University, the Italian University of Siena.
Genetic differences, and therefore, predisposition or, conversely, resistance to infection with COVID-19, scientists intend to identify by comparing the genomes of severely ill and those who carry the disease easily or do not show any symptoms at all. This also happens.
This is definitely in the genes - in the sense of attractiveness for viruses. But what?
- All people react differently to the same pathogen. There are highly susceptible, and there are those who are less susceptible, ” Nikolai Briko, the chief epidemiologist of the Russian Ministry of Health, head of the Department of Epidemiology and Evidence-Based Medicine at Sechenov University, said at a press conference in Moscow on March 23. And thus supported - verbally - geneticists who are looking for the peculiarities of the interaction of the DNA of the coronavirus and the people it attacked.
VLADIMIR LAGOVSKY
