New Delhi: Researchers believe that the coronavirus subvariant that is spreading rapidly in China may have evolved to attack the brain. The South China Morning Post reported that the study challenges previous assumptions that viruses generally become less dangerous. New research on the omicron subvariant of the coronavirus has suggested that the pathogen may be changing how it attacks the human body – shifting from infecting the respiratory system to increasingly targeting the brain. Researchers in Australia and France found BA.5 – the coronavirus subvariant driving what is now the world’s biggest surge of infections in China – caused much more damage to mouse brains and cultured human brain tissue than the previous BA.1 subvariant, Leading to brain swelling, weight loss and death, the South China Morning Post reported.
“Compared to BA. 1, we found that the BA.5 isolate displayed increased pathogenicity in K18-hACE2 mice with rapid weight loss, brain infection and encephalitis, and mortality. In addition, the BA.5 producing form BA. 1,” said a manuscript of the research.
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The manuscript has been uploaded to the preprint platform BioRxiv, and will receive peer review for publication.
“These results suggest that the omicron lineage is not evolving towards less pathogenicity,” wrote the team, which was led by virologist Andreas Suhrbier of the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute in Queensland, Australia, the South China Morning Post reported. .
However, other experts have cautioned, noting that a major limitation of the study was the mouse model it used, which they said may not apply to humans.
“They showed that all mice died of brain infection with Ba.5, which is clearly very different from human infection that we know of,” the report states.
Jin noted that it was widely accepted that BA.5 does not cause more neurological abnormalities in humans than previous subvariants, adding that the World Health Organization has stated that the Omicron variant does not increase pathogenicity. happened.
The SCMP reported that in a paper published last month in the journal Nature, a team of Japanese and American scientists reported that BA.5 inherited the low pathogenicity of omicron subvariants.
Several studies have shown that BA.5 is more infectious than other Omicron subvariants and can escape the human immune system with previous COVID-19 vaccination or infection. The strain has been found in over 100 countries and a few months ago was the dominant strain in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom.
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