In a potential breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19, a team of Australian scientists has been able to analyze blood samples from a patient who had contracted the new choroanvirus and who was hospitalized with moderate symptoms.
Thanks to this, the authors of the study , published in the journal Nature Medicine , affirm that it is the first time that they map the general immune response of the body to the new disease .
Two great applications
As Katherine Kedzierska of the Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity at the University of Melbourne explains:
We saw a really strong immune response that preceded clinical recovery. We noticed an immune response, but visually she was still not well and three days later the patient recovered.
His team’s investigation was "an important step in understanding the recovery from COVID-19." The findings have two practical applications:
First : to help virologists develop a vaccine because the goal of vaccination is to replicate the body’s natural immune response to viruses.
Second : help detection, and allow better predictions in future disease outbreaks about who is in the highest risk segment. In theory, these immune system "markers" could more accurately predict which patients have mild symptoms and which are at risk of dying.