A new study has discovered Covid’s “Achilles’ heel,” a viral protein that affects the body’s immune response and may explain why people wind up in hospitals.
The protein is Respiratory Syncytial Virus NS2 (RSV). According to a new study, if the body lacks this protein, the virus can be destroyed by the immune system before it causes severe inflammation. The researchers suggest this information could help prevent pneumonia, which is caused by the body’s excessive inflammatory reaction to respiratory viruses including SARS-COV-2.
RSV, like other respiratory viruses such as Covid, affects the lung cells that exchange gases.
They are used as factories by the protein to produce additional viruses.
However, uncontrolled virus replication in these cells causes cell death and can cause severe inflammation.
This can lead to lung diseases such as pneumonia, which can be fatal.
Researchers from Washington State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine conducted the research.
“Exaggerated inflammation clogs the airways and makes breathing difficult,” said Kim Chiok, a WSU post-doctoral researcher who led the study.
“This is why people who have these long-term and severe inflammatory responses get pneumonia and need help breathing, and it’s why they end up in the hospital in the ICU.”
The researchers are now building the groundwork for breaking the loop by learning more about how respiratory viruses stay in the cell.
RSV kills 160,000 people each year, mostly newborns, children, the elderly, and adults with impaired immune systems, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Using viruses without genes that code for distinct viral proteins, the researchers deduced the roles of viral proteins.
They compared these to a wild variant of the virus.
Ms Chiok said: “The virus has a series of tools, some tools with multiple functions, we wanted to learn about these tools by essentially taking them away.”
Each tool is made up of a unique viral protein.
Viral NS2 protein regulates autophagy.
During a virus infection, this is a cellular process that governs immunological defense.
When a virus enters a cell, a biological protein known as Beclin1 recognizes the danger.
RSV’s NS2 protein, on the other hand, manages to get past Beclin1’s defenses, allowing the virus to survive and multiply within the cell.
It subsequently spreads to neighboring cells, producing damage that triggers the body’s inflammatory reaction.
This is the process that causes pneumonia and other airway illnesses.
Beclin1 destroys the virus without the presence of the NS2 protein.
Ms Chiok said: “In a way, you are disabling NS2’s ability to modulate the cell’s immune defence mechanism.
“You can use therapeutics to target that protein, and potentially transfer this concept to other respiratory viruses like influenza A virus and SARS-CoV-2.”
Source: mBio
Image Credit: Getty
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