Researchers have recently discovered a key reason why some people are immune to the coronavirus.
According to a study conducted during the peak of the epidemic in 2021, the results of which were recently published, scientists found differences in the unique immune response associated with resistance to the viral infection of the disease.
The finding may explain why some people are immune to the virus, shedding light on the development of potential treatments and vaccines that mimic natural immune responses.
The results of the study, recently published in the scientific journal Nature, were conducted by researchers from the Wellcome Sanger Institute, University College London, Imperial College London and the Netherlands Cancer Institute.
In the study, researchers used single-cell sequencing to examine the immune response against SARS-CoV-2 infection in healthy adult volunteers, according to British newspaper The Guardian.
As part of the coronavirus human challenge study, 36 healthy adult volunteers in the United Kingdom with no prior history of coronavirus infection, and who were unvaccinated, were given a low dose of the virus intravenously.
The researchers tracked 16 of them and tracked the activity of immune cells in blood and nasal lining in detail, using single-cell sequencing to create datasets of more than 600,000 individual cells, providing the most comprehensive timeline of immune activity. Before, during and after infection.
The researchers concluded that there were 3 types of participants, where 6 were persistently infected and became ill, 3 were temporarily infected with the virus without being fully infected, and 7 were not infected. .
The researchers indicated that high levels of HLA-DQA2 gene activity prior to exposure may help people resist viral infection.
