Can you be genetically resistant to the novel coronavirus? A new paper suggests it is possible people might have the power to fight off COVID-19 because of their genetics.
Researchers said in the paper — published in the medical journal Nature Immunology — there might be people who are resistant to the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.
- Scientists said the virus has been known to invade households but leave one or two people without an infection, per Science Alert.
Moreover, the researchers hope the study will help them learn more about the coronavirus and how the human population might fight it.
- “The introduction of SARS-CoV-2 to a naive population, on a global scale, has provided yet another demonstration of the remarkable clinical variability between individuals in the course of infection, ranging from asymptomatic infections to life-threatening disease,” researchers wrote in the paper.
- “Our understanding of the pathophysiology of life-threatening COVID-19 has progressed considerably since the disease was first described in December 2019, but we still know very little about the human genetic and immunological basis of inborn resistance to SARS-CoV-2,” they wrote.
Scientists and experts have been studying immunity to the coronavirus for a long time, especially in recent days as they review how natural immunity can fight off the virus.
Virologists Theodora Hatziioannou and Paul Bieniasz, who both work at the Rockefeller University in New York City, are trying to figure out how people can be super immune to the coronavirus, as I wrote for the Deseret News. Those who are super immune can block mutant coronavirus strains in many cases.
- And researchers have recently found that there are people who become super immune by being infected with COVID-19 and getting vaccinated, NPR reported
- These people produced enough antibodies “capable of fighting off the coronavirus variants circulating in the world but also likely effective against variants that may emerge in the future,” according to NPR.