Studies are suggesting that a previous infection with other types of coronaviruses may lessen severity of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the form that the COVID-19 disease takes, according to findings issued by the Boston Medical Center.
The most frequently contracted coronavirus is the common cold. There are four different endemic coronaviruses that act as etiologic agents for the seasonal “common cold.” What is interesting about the cold viruses is the extent to which they share similarity, as shown byt gene sequence homology, with the human severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), responsible for COVID-19.
Medical research,drawn from patients living in the U.S., suggests that patients who had recently suffered from a cold virus had a reportedly less severe coronavirus disease-2019 illness. This was as compared to a second group ofpatients who had not contracted a cold virus but who had also become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
This finding led the researchers to conclude that pre-existing immune responses against other forms of human coronaviruses can help to mitigate the extent that the disease manifests itself in the human body. In terms of ‘severity’ this included whether or not an infected person with COVID-19 symptoms required the use of a mechanical ventilator.
The inference, according to one of the scientists involved, Manish Sagar is: “People are routinely infected with coronaviruses that are different from SARS-CoV-2, and these study results could help identify patients at lower and greater risk of developing complications after being infected with SARS-CoV-2.”
The research findings have been published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, in a paper titled “ecent endemic coronavirus infection is associated with less severe COVID-19.”
