The immune response elicited by this severe respiratory infection may protect people from contracting COVID-19.

According to a new study published in the journal PLOS Pathogens by Richard Robinson of The Ohio State University, the immune response built against tuberculosis stops mice from getting COVID-19.

The tuberculosis bacteria, Mycobacterium tuberculosis, and the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, are currently the main causes of death from infectious disease worldwide.

Tuberculosis is common, and scientists have wondered if the immune response elicited by this devastating lung infection would protect people against getting COVID-19. To find out more, researchers infected two different strains of mice with M. tuberculosis.

The mice were then introduced to the COVID-19 virus and monitored for signs of illness. They revealed that mice with tuberculosis showed no symptoms of COVID-19, most likely because the virus was stopped from growing in the lungs by the pre-existing immune response to tuberculosis.

Overall, the data show that tuberculosis infection renders the lungs of mice hostile to the COVID-19 virus.

If the same holds true for humans, this discovery could explain why there have been few instances of people with both tuberculosis and COVID-19 in the absence of other problems.

The results may also explain why some nations have high prevalence of COVID-19 infection but not both. Future research should focus on the interplay between COVID-19 and tuberculosis infections in humans, according to the researchers.

“TB and COVID are pandemics that affect every part of the world,” says Robinson. “Our study reflects the work of a diverse and talented group of OSU scientists to better understand how these two diseases influence one another, a surprising observation being that mice with TB are resistant to COVID in a lab setting.”

Source: 10.1371/journal.ppat.1010093

Image Credit: Getty

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