International NewsNational News

US study finds a new “SARS-CoV-2-like virus” that can infect people

The study, which was published in "PLOS Pathogens," discovered that the virus, known as "Khosta-2," was resistant to Covid vaccinations but also that it lacked the genes necessary to progress into a disease.

New Delhi: Researchers have identified a new virus that can infect humans and is resistant to the vaccines now on the market. This virus is similar to SARS-CoV-2 and was found in a Russian bat.

Researchers from Washington State University said in a study that was published on Thursday in the journal PLOS Pathogens that the virus known as “Khosta-2” belongs to the same class of coronaviruses as SARS-CoV-2 called sarbecovirus.

The finding emphasises the necessity of creating sarbecovirus vaccinations that are universal to protect people from pandemics similar to the Covid virus in the future, the researchers point out.

Respiratory viruses called sarboviruses regularly engage in recombination, which is the combining of two viral strains to create a new strain.

In late 2020, scientists from Washington State University in the US made the initial discovery of the virus in Russian bats.

Khosta-1 and Khosta-2 were two novel viruses that the researchers had discovered. They found that while Khosta-1 didn’t really threaten humans, Khosta-2 had some unsettling characteristics.

The virus initially seemed to pose little harm to people, but upon closer inspection, researchers were “very startled to find they could infect human cells,” said Michael Letko, a virologist at WSU and one of the study’s authors, in a press release.

Khosta-2 was discovered by the team to be resistant to both the monoclonal antibodies and serum from individuals vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2.

“Genetically, these weird Russian viruses looked like some of the others that had been discovered elsewhere around the world, but because they did not look like SARS-CoV-2, no one thought they were really anything to get too excited about,” Letko, a virologist at WSU, said in the statement.

The majority of sarbecoviruses, despite the fact that hundreds have recently been identified, mostly in Asian bats, are unable to infect human cells, according to the research team.

“That changes a little bit of our understanding of these viruses, where they come from, and what regions are concerning,” Letko said.

“Our research further demonstrates that sarbecoviruses circulating in wildlife outside of Asia — even in places like western Russia where the Khosta-2 virus was found — also pose a threat to global health and ongoing vaccine campaigns against SARS-CoV-2,” Letko said.

The virus avoids both vaccinations and antibodies.
The study team discovered that, similar to SARS-CoV-2, Khosta-2 may infect cells via its spike protein by binding to a receptor protein known as “angiotensin converting enzyme 2” (ACE2), which is present in all human cells.

They then set out to see if the new virus is protected against by the available vaccinations.

Using serum from human populations that had received the Covid-19 vaccination, researchers found that Khosta-2 was not neutralised by the current immunizations.

They also analysed serum from individuals who had contracted the Omicron version and discovered that those antibodies were likewise ineffective.

“Right now, there are groups trying to come up with a vaccine that doesn’t just protect against the next variant of SARS-2 (SARS-CoV-2) but actually protects us against the sarbecoviruses in general,” Letko said.

“Unfortunately, many of our current vaccines are designed [for] specific viruses we know infect human cells or those that seem to pose the biggest risk to infect us. But that’s a list that’s ever-changing. We need to broaden the design of these vaccines to protect against all sarbecoviruses,” added Letko.

The researchers stated that universal vaccinations must be created in order to provide protection against sarbecoviruses in general, but it also stressed that there is no immediate reason for concern.

According to the report, the virus is currently deficient in several of the genes thought to play a role in pathogenesis, or the process by which a disease arises, in humans.

That doesn’t, however, rule out the possibility that the virus could recombine with another virus, such as SARS-CoV-2, to mutate into a form that could be fatal, according to the researchers.

“When you see SARS-2 (SARS-CoV-2) has this ability to spill back from humans and into wildlife, and then there are other viruses like Khosta-2 waiting in those animals with these properties we really don’t want them to have, it sets up this scenario where you keep rolling the dice until they combine to make a potentially riskier virus,” Letko said.

Your Opinion Counts !

Tags
Show More

Related Articles

Close

Adblock Detected

Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker