Indians More Immune To Corona

Mohammad Iqbal Sultani
Globally the corona virus continues to wreak havoc as the figure of infected people has risen to 1,118,059 the highest number of cases were reported from the USA at 277,161(7392) deaths as global death toll surpassed 59,206. Corona viruses are family of viruses that cause diseases in animals . But most cause cold-like symptoms. Two other coronaviruses –Middle east respiratory syndrome (mers) and Severe acute respiratory syndrome (sars) are much more severe. The new virus ,officially called as COVID-19 has mutated into two strains ,one more aggressive than other. The source of the coronavirus is believed to be a wet market in wuhan which sold both dead and live animals. The risk of viruses jumping from animals to humans is more here. Bats are thought to be the source of covid-19 as bats are host of wide range of zoonotic viruses including Ebola ,HIV and Rabies. A study conducted by a group of researchers at the international centre for genetic engineering and Bio technology (ICGEB), New Delhi has revealed that the severity of covid-19 in India is less compared to other countries.
Though there were reports that the use of hiv anti-viral drugs have no effects in treating COVID 19 cases in china, the Indian council of medical research India has issued guidelines after similar drugs showed positive results in treating patients. A few FDA approved anti-malarial drugs and anti-viral drugs are used with significant success.
This is because of unique micro RNA called has-miR72b which successfully mutates the corona virus responsible for covid19, In other words the Indians have better immunity compared to other countries. This will help us to fight pandemic better. The findings which are yet to be published, it claims that the mutation spectrums of viruses were different in four countries. USA, ITALY, NEPAL, AND INDIA. Surprisingly, sequence from Nepal showed no variations, while maximum no. of mutations were identified in Indian sequence. We speculate that the presence of country specific mutation spectrum may explain the severity of illness in other countries compared to India, Said Dr Dinesh Gupta lead researcher who authored the paper. The researcher said the presence of unique mutation in Italy are probably responsible for the sudden upsurge in the number of affected cases and deaths there.However this speculation has to be verified with more evidence they said.
Role of micro RNA: Host antiviral miRNA plays a crucial role in the regulation of immune response to the virus infection. Many known human miRNAs appear to be able to target viral genes and their functions like interference replication, translation and expression. Out of all the miRNAs, hsa-miR-27b is the only unique miRNA specific to India sars-cov2 and showed no significant complimentary-based nucleotide-binding with the strain of sars-cov2 from other countries, the study observed.
Though there were reports that the use of hiv anti-viral drugs have no effects in treating COVID 19 cases in china, the Indian council of medical research India has issued guidelines after similar drugs showed positive results in treating patients. A few FDA approved anti-malarial drugs and anti-viral drugs are used with significant success.
( The author a research scholar is a content writer. Views are his own, [email protected])