Study investigates why certain COVID-19-infected individuals never exhibit symptoms
It is anticipated that almost 60 million people in the United States have been able to avoid contracting COVID-19. There are a lot of investigations going on right now to figure out why.
According to Jill Hollenbach, an associate professor of neurology at the University of California at San Francisco, “For one thing, a lot of the folks who believe they haven’t had COVID may have had it and simply were not symptomatic, so we’ve been concentrating on those people.”
While other researchers are looking into the reasons why some individuals have never been infected, Hollenbach investigated the reasons why some people who have been exposed to COVID-19 never develop symptoms of the disease.
“What about those folks who we know have been infected, and they’ve got a positive test for COVID, what about those people who never have any symptoms at all,” Hollenbach said after that. “What about those people who never get any symptoms at all?”
According to Hollenbach, symptomlessness may occur in between 10% and 30% of COVID-infected patients.Her team’s investigation revealed that the solution lies in the field of genetics. They found a mutation that stops people with the COVID virus from getting sick, even though they have the virus.
She said that “a specific version of these immune response genes, HLA, which is a fairly common form of this gene that many people have,” seems to be extremely significant in assisting individuals in having this silent illness course.
According to Hollenbach, because the study is so recent, they are currently attempting to have it published. She has high expectations that this will result in additional advances in the development of treatments and vaccinations.
