"Cell": Will infection with the new crown cause severe illness?

People who have undergone nucleic acid testing are probably no strangers to nasopharyngeal swabs

Recently, a research paper published in the top academic journal "Cell" comprehensively described the nasopharyngeal response after infection with the new coronavirus

“Why some people get extraordinarily ill has always been one of the puzzling problems of the new crown virus

In this study, scientists decided to find the answer from the "first battlefield" of the new crown invading the human body-the nasopharynx

▲Research diagram: Single-cell sequencing analysis of early nasopharyngeal swab samples provided by patients with different severity of new crowns (picture source: reference [1])

Subsequently, researchers at the Ragon Institute and the Broad Institute developed a new method to analyze nasopharyngeal swab samples using single-cell sequencing

"Our single-cell sequencing method allows us to comprehensively study the human body's response to disease at a specific time

Researchers have seen that many types of cells in the nasopharynx have become targets of infection by the new coronavirus

▲The nasal mucosal epithelial cells of mild or moderate patients and severe patients show differences in gene expression in the early stage of the disease (picture source: reference [1])

The more important finding is that patients with different degrees of disease showed different results when nasopharyngeal swab samples were provided in the early stage of diagnosis

In patients who subsequently develop severe symptoms, the antiviral response of epithelial cells of the nasal mucosa is much weaker, which means that the virus is more likely to move from the upper respiratory tract to the lower respiratory tract

"In severe patients, the interferon response of epithelial cells is relatively weak in the early stage of their infection and cannot strengthen their defense

In the next step, the researchers plan to continue to investigate what causes the nasopharyngeal interferon response to weaken

Reference materials:

[1] Carly GK Ziegler et al, (2021) Impaired local intrinsic immunity to SARS-CoV-2 infection in severe COVID-19.

[2] Why do some people get severe COVID-19? The nose may know.

[3] Early antiviral response in the nosemay determine the course of COVID-19.