This is the hope of an international team of researchers, coordinated by a Frenchman, Prof. Jean-Claude Casanova from the Necker Hospital in Paris: what if our genes contained a future treatment against Covid-19? Géraldine Zamansky, journalist for the Health Magazine on France 5, met this researcher.
franceinfo: Professor Casanova explained to you how some of us may be bringing solutions to the new coronavirus?
Geraldine Zamansky: Yes, his team is now particularly interested in those who are able to naturally resist this virus. For example if your partner has been sick, coughing for days next to you, and you haven’t caught him. Well, maybe it is thanks to a “secret weapon”, a genetic peculiarity, which has prevented the virus from making its nest in your body. To find out, researchers need to examine the genes of as many “resistant” people as possible. This is how they will be able to identify common points.
You mean they’ll find the “virus resistance gene (s)”?
This is their goal. If it is a kind of barrier on the surface of cells, we can try to reproduce it in the laboratory to neutralize the virus. So of course, deciphering a person’s genes is very difficult. So you will first have to check that you have not simply done a Covid without symptoms. This involves a simple blood test to see if there is the slightest sign of a battle with the virus in your immune system. If you have antibodies, for example, you are not 100% resistant to SarsCov2. It passed through your body without disturbing it too much.
So we are talking about vitamins to strengthen our immune defenses but they are mainly defined by our genes?
Oh no of course, vitamins count too, don’t give up on fruits this winter. But we are not genetically equal when it comes to infections. Moreover, this team has already identified profiles of fragility in the face of the coronavirus. They understood why people without any apparent risk factors ended up in intensive care. They had a rare anomaly in the organization of their immunity. And this research into the causes of severe forms of Covid-19 is not over.
So in summary, people who have gone through intensive care, such as those who stopped the virus, can contact the Covid human genetic effort consortium. These researchers on human genetics in the face of Covid obviously have a website: covidhge.com. There you will find all the necessary information and the address of the team closest to you, even if you are listening to us from Japan, Estonia or the United States!