(Cnn in Spanish) — Two different teams of researchers they said this week they found in New York City and elsewhere in the northeastern United States a new variant of the coronavirus that is worrisome.
It carries mutations that help it evade the body’s natural immune response, as well as the effects of monoclonal antibody treatments.
Genomics researchers have named the variant B.1,526. It appears in affected people in various neighborhoods in New York City, they said, and is “scattered in the northeast”.
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One of the mutations in this variant is the same as the disturbing change found in the variant that was first seen in South Africa and is known as B.1,351. It also seems to evade, in a way, the body’s response to vaccines. And it is becoming more common.
‘We see a steady increase in the detection rate from late December to mid-February, with an alarming increase to 12.7% in the last two weeks“Writes a team at Columbia University Medical Center in a report that has yet to be published, although it is scheduled to appear in pre-printed version this week.
It is the last of a growing number of viral variants that have emerged in the US., which has registered more cases of coronavirus (28 million) than any other country and where the spread is still intense.
It’s “homegrown, presumably in New York”Dr. David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia, who led the study team, said by email.
Viruses mutate all the time. The more people are infected and the longer they are infected, the more likely viruses will change. The body of a patient will be loaded with billions of copies of a virus and it is possible that it will change slightly or mutate. Most will leave as they arrived.
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But sometimes a mutation or pattern of mutations takes hold and is passed on. If viruses with such patterns become more common, they are called variants. Again, it’s not unusual for variants to emerge, but if they give the virus troubling properties, such as increased transmissibility or the ability to evade treatments and vaccines, that’s when doctors start to worry.
The mutation in this variant that worries researchers the most it’s called E484K and gives the virus the ability to overcome part of the body’s immune response, as well as authorized treatments with monoclonal antibodies. This mutation is appearing independently in many different cases, but it also appears in one particular variant: the so-called B.1,526.
«It is this novel variant that is emerging, alarmingly, in our patient population in recent weeks‘The Columbia team wrote in a copy of their report provided to CNN.
‘We found that the detection rate for this new variant is increasing in recent weeks. One concern is that could be starting to outcompete other strainsas well as the UK and South African variants, ”Ho told CNN.
“Nevertheless, we don’t have enough data to confirm this point now».
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But the E484K mutation seen in at least 59 different coronavirus lineagesthey said, which means it is evolving independently across the country and around the world in a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. You can give the virus an advantage.
‘Everything we know about this key mutation suggests that seems to escape the pressure of antibodiesHo said.
Separately, a team from the California Institute of Technology said they developed a software tool that also detected the rise of B.1,526 in New York. “It appears that the frequency of the B.1,526 lineage has increased rapidly in New York”They wrote in a preprint document, a report that has not been peer-reviewed but has been published online.
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