A group of Brazilian scientists identified a gene that can protect against COVID-19, based on the analysis of six couples in which the women always showed resistance to SARS-CoV-2, academic sources reported this Monday.
The study found that Those six women resistant to the virus had “greater expression” of the IFIT3 gene compared to their infected husbands, according to the Research Support Foundation of the State of São Paulo (FAPESP, by its Portuguese acronym).
that gene It is part of the body's antiviral response, and it has already been linked in other experiments to protection against other viral ailments, such as dengue and hepatitis B.
However, on this occasion, they managed “for the first time to prove this protective effect” since “it is very unlikely that women have not been exposed” to the coronavirus by being in close contact with their infected husbands, said Mateus Vidigal, first author of the study.
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The IFIT3 gene encodes a protein of the same name that binds to the RNA (ribonucleic acid) of the virus, which prevents it from replicating and, therefore, invading new cells and the disease progressing.
“It's not that these women weren't infected, in fact, they were. But The virus barely multiplied inside their cells and that is why they did not contract the disease. “, Vidigal pointed out.
The study, conducted by scientists from the University of São Paulo (USP) and published in the journal “Frontiers in Cellular and Infection Microbiology”, It began in 2020, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused around 700,000 deaths in Brazil.
In the first phase, they analyzed the genetic material of 86 couples, of which only six showed this discordance between the spouses, with one infected more than once and the other – the woman always – asymptomatic.
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Scientists collected blood samples from those six couples again in 2022, after a second infection and when the participants had already received two doses of the COVID-19 vaccine. The result was the same.
“We were able to observe that Cells from resistant women showed greater expression of the IFIT3 gene, compared to both their husbands and another group of five women who developed COVID-19,” Vidigal said.
The finding places the IFIT3 gene at the center of the target for possible new antiviral therapies which, supposedly, “could enhance the innate immune response against SARS-CoV-2 and other pathogens,” FAPESP noted.
Once the coronavirus resistance gene was discovered, Edecio Cunha, professor at the USP Faculty of Medicine, said that It is necessary to “understand the mechanisms that lead to greater expression of IFIT3.”
Alivia Hernandez