Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Physiology & Medicine => COVID-19 => Topic started by: evan_au on 25/09/2020 23:06:12
-
Some suggestions are around that lack of immediate interferon response to coronavirus infection may lead to severe COVID-19 a week or so later.
The reduced interferon type 1 response may be due to mutations in interferon, or antibodies against interferon (which disable it).
Could Interferon deficiency lead to severe COVID-19?
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interferon
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41392-020-00306-4
-
I heard that research results released in the past week showed that around 10% of the population have antibodies to interferon.
- Interferon is the first line of defence against viruses, and it is a very general response
It's not surprising that this auto-immune attack could happen to interferon - the adaptive immune response goes looking for any likely suspects when there is cell damage. If that damage is from viruses, there is also likely to be a lot of interferon around, which the immune response may interpret as the cause of the damage, instead of protection against further damage.
-
One might expect interferon deficiency to be a comorbitity. The coronavirus seems to down regulate the innate immune response in infected people - this is sited as the reason for the late onset of symptoms, typically 2 days after becoming infectious. So any impairment to the innate immune system, such as interferon deficiency could make a serious difference. I don't think there much known about what precipitates the worsening (commonly in the second week after symptoms start) that leads to hospitalising, so your question is open.
It would be a good idea to monitor some patients from pre-symtomatic through to recovery or hospital.