Kanske en förklaring till att en del verkar uppleva att deras Covid inte riktigt går över, i en ny studie i
Cell. Två av de varianter som går nu tycks vara allvarligare än tidigare Omicron. Varför tycks den då milda? Pga otydligheten i folks motståndskraft med mera, men JN.1 och dess föregångare BA.2.86 tycks kunna ta sig in i lungceller bättre:
"Highly mutated COVID variant BA.2.86—close ancestor of globally dominant “Pirola” JN.1—may lead to more severe disease than other Omicron variants, according to two new studies published Monday in the journal Cell.
In one study, researchers from Ohio State University performed a variety of experiments using a BA.2.86 pseudovirus—a lab-created version that isn’t infectious. They found that BA.2.86 can fuse to human cells more efficiently and infect cells that line the lower lung—traits that may make it more similar to initial, pre-Omicron strains that were more deadly.
In the other study, researchers in Germany and France came to the same conclusion. “BA.2.86 has regained a trait characteristic of early SARS-CoV-2 lineages: robust lung cell entry,” the authors wrote. The variant “might constitute an elevated health threat as compared to previous Omicron sublineages,” they added."
Tyvärr kanske dåliga nyheter för den som trodde att Covid var på väg att bli snällare:
"Still, Omicron had a penchant for infecting the upper airway versus the lower airway, where prior versions of the virus tended to accumulate, causing more severe disease. The new studies offer proof that this trend may very well be reversing, the authors contend. If true, it’s bad news for those who hoped the virus was slowly attenuating to the equivalent of a common cold.
'We cannot ignore the evidence' that Omicron may be evolving into a more severe form of itself, Dr. Shan-Lu Liu—professor and co-director of the Viruses and Emerging Pathogens Program at Ohio State University, and lead author on the first study—told Fortune."
I artikeln diskuteras olika oroande möjligheter, som att Covid kan ta vägen via ett djur igen, till människa, eller följande:
"Another, perhaps larger concern of Liu: the possibility that COVID recombines with another, more deadly coronavirus like SARS or MERS, which had case fatality rates around 10% and 34%, respectively. In contrast, COVID’s case fatality rate, among unvaccinated Americans, sat around 1% prior to Omicron, and around 0.11% after."
https://fortune.com/well/2024/01/08/covid-omicron-variants-pirola-ba286-jn1-more-severe-disease-lung-gi-tract-symptoms/
