Hidden Immunity
It is easier to resist at the beginning than at the end - Leonardo da Vinci
image by: Mầu Minh Phương
HWN Suggests
The disease-resistant patients exposing Covid-19's weak spots
As a young man, Stephen Crohn could only watch helplessly as one by one, his friends began dying from a disease which had no name. When his partner, a gymnast called Jerry Green, fell desperately ill in 1978 with what we now know as Aids, Crohn simply assumed he was next.
But instead as Green became blind and emaciated as the HIV virus ravaged his body, Crohn remained completely healthy. Over the following decade, dozens of friends and other partners would meet a similar fate.
In 1996, an immunologist called Bill Paxton, who worked at the Aaron Diamond Aids Research Center in New York, and had been looking for gay men who were apparently resistant to infection, discovered…
Resources
Are we underestimating how many people are resistant to Covid-19?
Scientists are racing to work out why some populations have fared better than others during the pandemic.
The people with hidden immunity against Covid-19
Most bizarrely of all, when researchers tested blood samples taken years before the pandemic started, they found T cells which were specifically tailored to detect proteins on the surface of Covid-19. This suggests that some people already had a pre-existing degree of resistance against the virus before it ever infected a human. And it appears to be surprisingly prevalent: 40-60% of unexposed individuals had these cells.
A lucky few seem ‘resistant’ to Covid-19. Scientists want to know why
The question of viral resistance has perplexed Mayana Zatz, a University of São Paulo genetics professor, for years, beginning with exploring the clinical variability of genetic diseases in patients who carried the same pathogenic mutation. She began with neuromuscular disorders like Duchenne muscular dystrophy, and then expanded to exploring why the Zika virus caused severe brain damage in some newborns while others were healthy.
People testing negative for Covid-19 despite exposure may have ‘immune memory'
Study says some individuals clear virus rapidly due to a strong immune response from existing T-cells, meaning tests record negative result.
There May Be People Who Are Genetically Resistant to COVID-19, Scientists Say
Two humans are at least 99.9 percent genetically identical to each other. But it's that 0.1 percent or so that makes us special. This is what determines all our differences, from the unique ways we look, to our resistance or susceptibility to diseases such as HIV. Certain tiny tweaks in the genetic code can be incredibly helpful not only for the individual, but society.
The disease-resistant patients exposing Covid-19's weak spots
Some people are unusually resilient to the coronavirus, so scientists are now searching their genes and blood in the hope of finding the pandemic's Achilles' heel.
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