It covid-1 pandemic not finished yet. In fact, it shows signs of slowing down a lama.
But even as politicians and health authorities struggle over how, if anything, to do it continue to be processed Small river pandemicscientists predicted next One. They roam the planet in search of animal viruses such as SARS-CoV-2It can enter the population and cause serious disease on a global scale.
They only found one. Which Disgusting.
In 2020, a team of Russian scientists collected several horseshoe bats in Sochi National Park in southern Russia. The Russians have identified a new virus in bats which they have called Khosta-2. Basically, this virus appears to have a lot in common with SARS-CoV-2.
Two years later, separate teams, including scientists from Washington State University and Tulane University, tested Khosta-2 with a newly discovered Russian bat virus, hoping to determine if they could infect humans. And if so, our antibodies have some chance of stopping it.
Preliminary results explained by the team a New peer-reviewed study appeared last week in Science magazine Pathogenic PLOS, worry. The second bat virus does not appear to be contagious. But Khosta-2, on the other hand, loves human cells.
“We tested how well the spiked protein of this bat virus infects human cells under different conditions,” the scientists wrote. “We have found that the rise of the Khosta-2 virus can infect [the] cells, similar to human pathogens, use the same entry mechanism. “
Equally concerning, Khosta-2 has been shown to be “resistant to neutralization by the serum of individuals vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2”. In other words, our body’s defenses against COVID-19 may not protect us from the hypothetical disease caused by Chosta-2.
The implications are clear. We need better antibodies to beat Khosta-2. “Our findings highlight the urgent need to continue developing new and more protective vaccines,” wrote the scientists responsible for the new study.
Like SARS-CoV-2 and hundreds of other viruses, Khosta-2 uses this spike-shaped protein on its surface to capture and infect host cells. But most SARPs can only infect species that are their common hosts. Usually bats.
What makes Khosta-2 Special is that, like SARS-CoV-2, it can also infect humans, at least under laboratory conditions. What makes Khosta-2 so scary? it is apparently ignoring the antibodies that currently work against SARS-CoV-2. Again, under laboratory conditions.
“The more we destroy ecosystems and allow new species and viruses to mix, the more we spin the roulette wheel in nature.“
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– James Lawler, University of Nebraska Medical Center
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There is a lot of uncertainty here. The Tulane State University team did not attempt to infect real humans with Khosta-2. To test for infection, they exposed the Russian bat virus to human cell cultures. To test our immunity, they exposed the virus to COVID-19 antibodies. “We can only test what we can test,” Michael Letko, a virologist at Washington State University and co-author of the study, told the Daily Beast.
But immune tests in particular aren’t always representative of how our immune systems actually work, which the study authors readily admit. “Individual immune responses will vary, consisting of innate, adaptive and cellular immune responses,” Letko said. “We only looked at neutralizing antibodies in this study.”
So don’t panic just yet. There are many animal viruses out there, many of which are closely related to SARS-CoV-2 or at least use some of the same biological mechanisms to infect their hosts. Most of them never infect anyone and may not even be able to do so in real conditions outside the laboratory.
With further study, Khosta-2 could become a scientific goldfish. A virus that looks scarier than it actually is. “We have a hard time predicting exactly which ones will actually be able to crack the code to be effective human pathogens,” James Lawler, an infectious disease expert at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, told the Daily Beast.
But it cannot be denied that as humans expand and clear more and more forests for agriculture and cities, they come into contact with increasingly exotic animal species. Each encounter is an opportunity for animal viruses to infect humans, a process that scientists call “zoonosis”.
“Overall, we can say that zoonotic risk has increased for many types of viruses,” Letko said. He considers the recent history of infectious diseases in humans. SARS-CoV-2 only otherwise Animal viruses that are transmitted to humans, after avian flu, SARS-CoV-1, MERS and others.
There are many reasons to fear an epidemic later, later COVID-19. Chosta-2 could be the next virus that infects us. Maybe it will be one of the other pathogens. “The more we destroy ecosystems and allow new species and viruses to mix, the more we spin the roulette wheel in nature,” said Lawler. We need to keep our eyes open and be prepared.
The most useful thing we can do, besides clearing the forests where bats and their viruses live, is to develop vaccines that work against a wide variety of similar pathogens. There are many Global vaccine against the Corona virus In the development of which scientists hope to work against current and future variants of SARS-CoV-2.
Letko said the “global coronavirus” vaccine could also work against Sarpicoron viruses such as Khosta-2. We can’t say for sure until we test it. But as COVID funding dwindles, extensive testing could slip further into the future.
And if this vaccine is universal Do not Working against Khosta-2, we may need a new one vax combination, which is more widely effective. Barton Haynes, an immunologist at Duke University’s Human Vaccine Institute who is developing a vaccine for the novel coronavirus, told the Daily Beast that the most likely outcome would be a combination of separate vaccines which, when combined, could provide broad protection against. a wide variety of viruses. .crown. .
In this case, we may have a competition on our hands. Could we develop this new vaccine faster than some of the new Sarpicoron viruses, be it Khosta-2 or an unknown cousin, which have passed from animals to humans and entered the human race? And can we really have enough people? Obtain Vaccines on time?
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