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New Delhi: Scientists from two Indian research agencies – the National Center of Disease Control and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), confirmed that the enhanced infectivity of the delta variant and its ability to neutralize antibodies has made it the most prominent among other countries such as India and the UK. version has been made. .
Using data from Delhi and the UK, as well as laboratory experiments on miniature organs, the researchers, together with a team at the University of Cambridge, examined how well the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 was able to evade an immune response.
in a study published in the magazine Nature On Monday, he noted that Delta is better able to replicate and spread than other types of virus.
“There is also evidence that neutralizing antibodies produced as a result of previous infection or vaccination are less effective in preventing this type,” Ravi Gupta, one of the study’s senior authors, from the University of Cambridge, said in a statement.
Gupta further said that the variant was likely behind the aggressive second wave of the pandemic in India in April-May this year, which hit health infrastructure across the country.
“These factors are likely to have contributed to the devastating pandemic wave in India during the first quarter of 2021, where more than half of the cases were individuals who were previously infected with an earlier variant,” he said.
First identified in India in late 2020, the delta variant or B.1.617.2 was designated as the ‘Version of Concern’ by the World Health Organization in May. Because of its increased transmittance.
Since then, it has spread around the world and according to the study researchers in the UK, almost all new cases of Covid in the country are caused by the delta variant.
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Delta version’s ‘select advantage’
For the study, the team used 3D airway organoids, or ‘mini-organs’, grown from cells from the airways of the human lung that mimic the behavior of the parent cells in this study.
They used both a live virus and a ‘pseudotyped virus’ – a synthetic form of the virus that mimics the dominant mutation on the delta variant – to infect organoids and observe the behavior of the virus in the respiratory tract.
According to the study, the delta variant was more efficient at breaking down cells than the other variants. It was also found to be better at repeating itself.
Both of these factors give Delta a ‘selection advantage’ over other variants, the study said, which explains why it has become so dominant. Selection advantage refers to the acquisition of a trait that gives an organism or a type a greater chance of survival and reproduction.
“The delta variant has spread widely around the world to become the dominant form because it spreads rapidly and is better able to infect individuals than most other variants we have seen. It is also better at acquiring existing immunity – either through previous exposure to the virus or to vaccination – although the risk of moderate to severe disease is reduced in such cases,” National Center for Disease Control, Delhi, India K Partha Rakshit, joint senior writer, in a statement.
The study authors also noted that the spread of the delta variant among healthcare workers is particularly concerning because they can infect individuals with compromised immune systems.
“Although they (health workers) may experience only mild COVID themselves, they run the risk of infecting individuals who have a sub-immune response to vaccination due to underlying health conditions – and these patients may be at risk of serious illness,” said Anurag Aggarwal, director. CSIR Institute of Genomics and Integrative Biology and joint senior author of the study.
“We urgently need to consider ways to promote vaccine responses against the variants among healthcare workers. It also suggests that infection control measures will need to be continued in the post-vaccination era,” Agarwal said.
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Vaccines and Delta Versions
The team of researchers also extracted serum from blood samples collected from individuals in the UK who had previously been infected with COVID or had been fully vaccinated with the Oxford-AstraZeneca or Pfizer vaccines. The serum contains antibodies raised in response to infection or vaccination.
They found that the delta variant virus was 5.7 times less sensitive to sera from previously infected individuals and eight times less sensitive to vaccine sera than the alpha variant (which was first identified in South Africa).
This means that eight times as many antibodies are needed to block the delta version of the virus from a vaccinated individual, while five times as many antibodies are needed to block the lineage in a healthy patient.
Researchers in Delhi also analyzed more than 100 infected healthcare workers from three hospitals, almost all of whom had been vaccinated against SARS-CoV-2, and found that the delta version was vaccinated to a greater extent than the alpha version. transmitted among employees.
(Edited by Rachel John)
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