BREAKING! COVID-19 Should Not Be Regarded As A Single Disease But Rather As Different Distinct Diseases According To The Specific Mutated Strains

COVID-19 Research: To date the SARS-CoV-2 Coronavirus’s ability to mutate has been vastly underestimated even the slightest mutations has been taken lightly without realizing how these tiny changes are affecting the potency, characteristics and properties of the emerging strain and how these mutations affect their deadliness. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.14.20060160v1.full.pdf


 
Dr Li Lanjuan, Professor from Zhejiang University and her colleagues found within a small group of patients, many mutations not previously reported. These mutations included changes so rare that genomic and medical scientists had never considered they might occur.
 
The medical and genomic researchers also confirmed for the first time with laboratory evidence that certain mutations could create strains deadlier than others.
 
Dr Li’s research provided the first hard evidence that mutation could affect how severely the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus caused disease or damage in its host.
 
Dr Li took an unusual approach to investigate the virus mutation. She analyzed the viral strains isolated from 11 randomly chosen COVID-19 patients from Hangzhou in the eastern province of Zhejiang, and then tested how efficiently they could infect and kill cells.
 
It was observed that the deadliest mutations in the Zhejiang patients had also been found in most patients across Europe, while the milder strains were the predominant varieties found in parts of the United States, such as Washington state, according to their research.
 
Another study had found that New York strains had been imported from Europe. The death rate in New York was similar to that in many European countries, if not worse. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.08.20056929v2
 
However the weaker mutation did not mean a lower risk for everybody, according to Dr Li’s study. In Zhejiang, two patients in their 30s and 50s who contracted the weaker strain became severely ill. Although both survived in the end, the elder patient needed treatment in an intensive care unit.
 
The research findings could shed light on differences in regional mortality. The pandemic’s infection and death rates vary from one country to another, and many explanations have been proposed.
 
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Genomic researchers had noticed that the dominant strains in different geographic locations were inherently different. Some researchers suspected the varying mortality rates could, in part, be caused by mutations howev er they had no direct proof.
 
The hypothesis was further complicated because survival rates depended on many factors, such as age, underlying health conditions or even blood type.
 
Unfortunately In hospitals, COVID-19-19 has been treated as one disease and patients have received the same treatment regardless of the strain they have.
 
Dr Li and her colleagues suggested that defining mutations in a region might determine actions to fight the virus.
 
Every particular strain should be studied and treated differently.
 
Although drug and vaccine development is urgent, not taking into account the impact of these accumulating mutations could have setbacks and devastating consequences.
 
Although the sample size in this most recent study was remarkably small, there are other studies tracking the virus mutation usually involved hundreds, or even thousands, of strains.
 
Dr Li and her team of researchers detected more than 30 mutations.
 
Among them, 19 mutations or about 60 per cent alone were new.

It was found some of these mutations could lead to functional changes in the virus’ spike protein, a unique structure over the viral envelope enabling the coronavirus to bind with human cells. Computer simulation predicted that these mutations would increase its infectivity.
 
In order to verify the theory, Dr Li and colleagues infected cells with strains carrying different mutations. The most aggressive strains could generate 270 times as much viral load as the weakest type. These strains also killed the cells the fastest.
 
Dr Li warned, “It was an unexpected result from fewer than a dozen patients, indicating that the true diversity of the viral strains is still largely underappreciated.”
 
The new mutations were genes different from the earliest strain isolated in Wuhan, where the virus was first detected in late December last year.
 
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Each strain of the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus changes at an average speed of about one mutation per month. As of date, more than 10,000 strains had been sequenced by scientists around the globe, containing more than 4,300 mutations, according to the China National Centre for Bioinformation.
 
However most of these samples, though, were sequenced by a standard approach that could generate a result quickly. The genes were read just once, for instance, and there was room for mistakes.
 
Dr Li and her team used a more sophisticated method known as ultra-deep sequencing. Each building block of the virus genome was read more than 100 times, allowing the researchers to see changes that could have been overlooked by the conventional approach.
 
The genomic and medical researchers also found three consecutive changes known as tri-nucleotide mutations in a 60-year-old patient, which was a rare event. Usually the genes mutated at one site at a time. This patient spent more than 50 days in hospital, much longer than other Covid-19 patients, and even his faeces were infectious with living viral strains.
 
Dr Li suggested, “Investigating the functional impact of this tri-nucleotide mutation would be highly interesting>”
The head of the bioinformatics division at the National Laboratory for Information Science and Technology at Tsinghua University, Professor Zhang Xuegong, said ultra-deep sequencing could be an effective strategy to track the virus’ mutation.
 
He added, “It can produce some useful information.”
 
However, this approach could be much more time consuming and costly. It was unlikely to be applied to all samples.
 
Professor warned, “Our understanding of the virus remains quite shallow. There are so many unanswered questions.”
 
Thailand Medical News has been warning about the mutations and the emerging strains from the beginning of the outbreak.
 
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-new-research-indicates-sars-cov-2-coronavirus-is-indeed-mutating-into-various-strains-that-have-specific-preference-of-attacking-human-host-
 
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-news-two-strains-of-coronavirus-identified,-one-more-aggressive--researchers-believe-that-virus-has-mutated-
 
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-latestcoronavirus-research-reveals-that-the-virus-has-mutated-gene-similar-to-hiv-and-is-1,000-times-more-potent-
 
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/largest-meta-analysis-of-sequenced-genomes-of-the-coronavirus-reveals-a-new-subtype-has-emerged
 
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/breaking-news-:-researchers-from-institut-of-pasteur-say-that-new-coronavirus-has-rapid-multiplication-capabilities-both-in-host-and-in-culture
 
https://www.thailandmedical.news/news/latest-coronavirus-showing-resistance-to-earlier-antivirals,-seems-to-be-evolving
 
For the latest COVID-19 research, keep logging to Thailand Medical News
 
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