With the multiple variants, such as Omicron, the number of contaminations linked to Covid-19 has exploded. It is therefore proving increasingly difficult to find a person who has never contracted the virus. However, scientists are looking for these rare pearls in order to study their profile. Their resistance to Covid is intriguing and experts would very much like to analyze their profile to understand the phenomenon and find a way to fight the disease over time.
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Scientists appeal: where are the people who have never contracted the virus?
A few months ago, a major study was launched. In October 2021, an international team of researchers published in the journal Nature Immunology an article on the Covid-19, while launching an appeal at the same time. Their goal ? Identify and recruit as many people as possible who are naturally resistant to Covid.
A profile that is proving difficult to find for scientists. Indeed, the latter are looking for people who have never been infected with the virus and who are thus considered resistant to Covid. But with the multiplication of variants, in particular Omicron, Covid-19 infections have experienced a real peak. More and more people have therefore contracted the virus. Some, for example, think they have never had it, but are in fact asymptomatic. The scientists also observed another scenario that could skew the study. Many people have respected the barrier gestures very strictly, perhaps a little too much, and they would therefore perhaps not be naturally immune but simply very careful.
It is therefore difficult for researchers to find the cases that correspond perfectly to their research. Nevertheless, it is essential for them to analyze these profiles of rare individuals, because as the site “Midi Libre” points out, they “could perhaps hold the key to the end of the pandemic”.
Why have some people never contracted Covid-19?
A question persists in everyone’s mind: how to explain that some people have never caught the Covid after two years of pandemic?
The researchers have raised several hypotheses that could explain this phenomenon. The first: people with regular colds would be less likely to catch Covid. Why ? Quite simply, because the common cold would protect against virus infection thanks to cells developed on purpose.
Another theory mentioned by the researchers: a genetic immunity, as explained by András Spaan, a clinical microbiologist and researcher at Rockefeller University in New York, who is leading a search for genetic material responsible for resistance to coronaviruses, as reported in the “ Washington Post”: “What we are looking for are potentially very rare genetic variants with a very large impact on the individual”.
An encouraging international study for the future
So far, the international study has successfully recruited 700 participants. In total, scientists were able to screen more than 5,000 people who thought they were potentially immune to Covid-19.
By carrying out this research, the objective of the scientists is to understand the way the virus develops, but also to analyze how the Covid actually infects humans.
If the experts manage to obtain conclusive results for their questions, it will thus be easier to establish a treatment capable of fighting the virus and thus preventing Covid-19 from entering the body and infecting a person.
