News from December 29, Beijing time,A paper published a few days ago on the website bioRxiv shows that compared with other variants of the new coronavirus, the Omi Keron variant is not efficient in infecting the lungs and spreading between cells.Studies have also shown that although the symptoms are mild, Omi Keron can avoid most of the antibodies produced by vaccination.
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In a statement, Ravindra Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute of Immunology and Infectious Diseases, said in a statement that studies have shown that booster injections can increase the ability of vaccine antibodies to neutralize the virus.
Gupta said that the Omi Keron variant is a double-edged sword: it can better avoid the immune system on the one hand, but at the same time it loses part of the ability to cause severe illness.
The research team found that Omi Keron entered the lung cells less efficiently than the Delta mutant strain.In the second experiment, after entering the cell, the Omi Keron mutant was not as efficient as the Delta mutant in initiating cell fusion, which affected its ability to replicate in lung cells. Cell fusion is common in severely ill patients with new coronary pneumonia.
Gupta said, “We speculate that the more efficiently the virus infects human cells, the more severe the symptoms it will cause. Omi Keron has a lower efficiency in entering lung cells and is less likely to cause cell fusion, which means it causes The lung symptoms are relatively minor.”
The research team needs to conduct further studies to confirm that the phenomena observed in the laboratory will also appear in the human body. Gupta said in a statement that to maximize the protection of the vaccine against the Omi Keron variant, people should inject booster shots.
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