Complex Event Analysis - Report
Key Focus
Coronavirus mutations affect deadliness of strains, Chinese study finds
Chinese team finds first hard evidence that mutation can affect how severely virus harms its host
Most aggressive strains could generate 270 times as much viral load as the least potent type
Stephen Chen
Stephen Chen in Beijing
Published 10:41pm 20 Apr. 2020, scmp..com
A new study by one of China's top scientists has found the ability of the new coronavirus to mutate has been vastly underestimated and different strains may account for different impacts of the disease in various parts of the world.
Professor Li Lanjuan and her colleagues from Zhejiang University found within a small pool of patients many mutations not previously reportedLi and her colleagues suggested that defining mutations in a region might determine actions to fight the virus.
"Drug and vaccine development, while urgent, need to take the impact of these accumulating mutationsThese mutations included changes so rare that scientists had never considered they might occur.
They also confirmed for the first time with laboratory evidence that certain mutations could create strains deadlier than others.
"Sars-CoV-2 has acquired mutations capable of substantially changing its pathogenicity," Li and her collaborators wrote in a non-peer reviewed paper released on preprint service medRxiv..org on Sunday.
Li's study provided the first hard evidence that mutation could affect how severely the virus caused disease or damage in its host.
Li took an unusual approach to investigate the virus mutationMomentum supporting factors
(strains, virus)Challenge supporting factors
(hospitals, mutations) (health, mutations)Work-in-progress supporting factors
(mutations, virus) (mutations, strains) (mutations, scientists) (scientists, virus) (strains, virus) (mutations, tri-nucleotide) (mutations, service) (service, virus) (mutations, preprint) (preprint, virus)