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Brescia, December 28, 2020 – UNAnother variant of the Coronavirus, in addition to English: is state isolated in Brescia Laboratories and circulate since the beginning of August in Italy. Therefore, the Italian variant precedes the British one, which emerged only in late September. “It could also be a precursor,” he explained. in Adnkronos Salute Arnaldo Caruso, President of the Italian Society of Virology (Siv-Isv), Professor of Microbiology and Clinical Microbiology at the University of Brescia, Director of the Microbiology Laboratory of Asst Spedali Civili. And I add: “The variant of the virus was isolated in August in an asymptomatic patient, who was not hospitalized in the Civil de Brescia, who had been battling covid for months. The situation intrigued us and now we can say that an English-like variant of the virus could circulate in Italy. But that at times can be considered a ancestor english virus“.
The identified variant, explained the expert, “has several mutation points in the Spike protein, the ‘hook’ that the virus uses to attack the receptor present in the target cells of our body. Like the English, the Italian variant also has a mutation in a nerve center of the Spike / cell receptor interaction, more precisely at position 501 “. But unlike the Gb mutant, the Italian variant has also a second mutation at position 493, which
it makes their Spike protein slightly different than the pandemic virus we all know today. “
But how is Are you coming to describe the Italian variant? “By chance – said Caruso – observe abnormal viral persistence in a patient who had suffered from Covid-19 in April. Even after healing, swabs done from August had always tested positive with highly loaded viruses. In November we decided to sequence the virus to understand the reason for this persistence, and to our surprise we realized that we had identified a new variant, similar but not identical to the English variant that was also beginning to circulate in Italy. At this point we also sequenced a sample from the same patient obtained in August ”, discovering that“ the variegated Spike was already present then, with all its mutations ”.
“We do not know if the English variant appeared exactly at the end of September, as well as ours at the beginning of August – the virologists specified – A temporal analysis of the Sars-CoV-2 sequences, carried out by the group of Massimo Ciccozzi”, epidemiologist of the Campus BioMedico University of Rome “, tells us that this new Italian variant could be generated around the beginning of July. What we can affirm from the studies of our colleague Ciccozzi is that ours is without a doubt the first evidence of mutations in the Spike protein at the level of position 501 in Italy and perhaps, at least to date, in Europe. The sequence homology between the variant that we have identified and the English one leads us to think that the former may have in fact generated the others that are emerging today on our continent. But to affirm this it is necessary to reconstruct the steps, and not many analyzes of the viral genome are yet available ”.
But there is a fear that the Could the anti-Covid vaccine not work in the Italian variant? “Theoretically not – answered Caruso – The vaccine generates a complex response to many areas of the Spike protein”, then, “even if there were some antibodies that could not recognize a mutated area such as the one at position 501 or 493, there are surely others capable of binding to non-mutated portions of the protein. Their binding would be sufficient to prevent interaction between Spike and the cell receptor, if only for a kind of “steric hindrance” that the antibodies would create on the surface of the virus. However, we will have some answer to this question. ” “The high viral load present in the August and November swabs” performed on the patient who did not test negative “allowed us to isolate the viral mutants in Brescia. This,” says Caruso, will allow us to test these viruses with sera from Covid-19 patients obtained during the first pandemic wave, and to evaluate the ability of antibodies to neutralize this variant with respect to previously circulating viral strains. As soon as they become available, sera from vaccinated patients will also be evaluated in a similar way. I remain optimistic at this time, “he said. concluded the president of the Italian virologists.
Bassetti: “Italian variant causes peak of cases in November”
“There has been a lot of hype about the variation of English, but as we have seen each country has isolated variants which are then compatible with what happens with viruses that mutate. That isolated in Brescia could justify in part and make us understand why we we had in October and November, especially in Lombardy, so many cases with a very easy spread of the virus in particular areas. “This is what he said Matteo Bassetti, director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic of the San Martino hospital in Genoa and member of the Covid-19 crisis unit of Liguria, commenting on the discovery in Brescia of an Italian variant of the coronavirus that has been circulating since August.
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