Super exciting and very laborious new study @berlinnovation (with @UKL_Leipzig and us @dkfz) on the question of why #children are so much less likely to develop severe #COVID19 than adults! Central point (experts may smile tiredly 😉): #interferon!
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nature.com/articles/s4158…
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nature.com/articles/s4158…
Our colleagues in Berlin studied cells in nasal swabs from a total of >80 people (single cell RNA sequencing, #scRNASeq)– 42 children and 44 adults, half of each were healthy and half #SARSCoV2-infected. What we found was intriguing: already in…
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... healthy children, the cells of the nasal mucosa (epithelial and immune cells) were already on heightened alert! I.e. they had a significantly higher expression of the sensor system for #virus infection (esp. MDA5 and RIG-I). @VladimirMagalh in our lab was able to show ...
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...that such an elevated level of MDA5 alone is sufficient to enable epithelial cells to respond rapidly to #SARSCoV2 infection and secrete #interferon. And that's exactly what our colleagues found in children's swab samples: in the first...
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...days of infection, children reacted much more strongly to #SARSCoV2 infection and activated a strong antiviral defense program. It is reasonable to assume that this is a key part of the explanation for why children are so much more resistant to...
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... viral infections - especially #SARSCoV2 / #COVID19 - than adults.
Huge thanks go out to Irina Lehmann and @CaptainSysBio for inviting me to become part of the study team and for the fabulous (as usual) collaboration! Was an exciting journey!
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Huge thanks go out to Irina Lehmann and @CaptainSysBio for inviting me to become part of the study team and for the fabulous (as usual) collaboration! Was an exciting journey!
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Further thanks go out to @dfg_public for funding my efforts via their COVID focus funding, as well as to #fightCOVID @dkfz for support.
Also thank you to @VirusesImmunity and @virusninja for inspiration!
@CytokineSociety members may find this study interesting as well:)
Also thank you to @VirusesImmunity and @virusninja for inspiration!
@CytokineSociety members may find this study interesting as well:)
Mentioned by @EricTopol (which is like, umm, ennobling, if that’s the right word)
https://twitter.com/erictopol/status/1427985750381907973
Dang– forgot to mention @TRR179_2 in my funding acknowledgments above! @dfg_public allowed us to re-allocate resources to COVID while we couldn’t work on liver-/hepatitis virus related stuff (btw, also interferons, of course! 😉).
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