Researchers find worrying new variant of coronavirus in New York City

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Genomics researchers named the variant B.1.526. It appears in those affected in various neighborhoods in New York City, they said, and is “scattered across the northeast.”

One of the mutations in this variant is the same regarding the change found in the variant first seen in South Africa and known as B.1.351. It also appears to be somewhat eluding the body’s response to vaccines. And it is becoming more and more common.
“We have seen a steady increase in the detection rate from late December to mid-February, with an alarming increase to 12.7% over the past two weeks,” wrote a team at Columbia University Medical Center in a report that did not has not yet been released. published, although it is scheduled to appear in a preprinted version this week.
It is the latest of a growing number of viral variants that have emerged in the United States, which have recorded more cases of the coronavirus – 28 million – than any other country and where the spread is still intense.

It’s “grown here, presumably in New York City,” Dr David Ho, director of the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center in Columbia, who led the study team, said via email.

Viruses are mutating all the time. The more people are infected and the longer they are infected, the more likely the viruses are to change. A patient’s body will be loaded with billions of copies of a virus and may be slightly modified or mutated. Most come and go.

But sometimes a mutation or pattern of mutations sets in and is passed on. If viruses with such patterns become more common, they are called variants. Again, it’s not unusual for variants to appear, but if they endow the virus with disturbing properties, such as better transmissibility or the ability to evade treatments and vaccines, then doctors start to worry.

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The mutation in this variant that researchers are most concerned about is called E484K, and it gives the virus the ability to bypass part of the body’s immune response, as well as allowed treatments with monoclonal antibodies. This mutation appears independently in many different cases, but also appears in a particular variant – the one called B.1.526.

“It is this new variant that is increasing alarmingly in our patient population in recent weeks,” the Columbia team wrote in a copy of their report provided to CNN.

“We are seeing that the detection rate of this new variant is increasing over the past few weeks. One concern is that it may start to outgrow other strains, as do the British and South African variants,” Ho told CNN .

“However, we don’t have enough data to confirm this point now.”

But the E484K mutation is seen in at least 59 different coronavirus lineages, they said – meaning it is evolving independently across the country and across the world in a phenomenon known as convergent evolution. . This can give the virus an advantage.

Lot of local coronavirus mutations seen in the United States

“Everything we know about this key mutation suggests that it appears to be escaping antibody pressure,” Ho said.

Separately, a team from the California Institute of Technology said they had developed a software tool that also spotted the rise of B.1.526 in New York. “It appears that the frequency of the B.1.526 line has increased rapidly in New York City,” they wrote in a preprint – a report that was not peer reviewed but has been posted online.

On Tuesday, two teams reported another variant that appears to be on the rise in California.

They are concerned that the variant may not only be more contagious, but may also cause more serious illness. As with the New York Reports, their research is in its very early stages, has not been published or peer reviewed, and needs more work.

A team from the University of California at San Francisco tested virus samples from recent outbreaks across California and found that it was becoming much more common. It was not seen in any September samples, but by the end of January it was found in half of the samples.

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This variant, which the team calls B.1.427 / B.1.429, has a different pattern of mutations than the variants first seen in the UK, called B.1.1.7 or B.1.351. A mutation, called L452R, affects the virus spike protein, which is the bit that attaches to cells infected with the virus.

“A specific mutation, the L452R mutation, in the spike protein receptor binding domain may allow the virus to anchor to cells more efficiently. Our data shows that this is probably the key mutation that makes this variant more effective. infectious, “Dr. Charles Chiu, associate director of the UCSF Clinical Microbiology Lab, who led one of the studies, told CNN.

And they’ve found evidence that it’s more dangerous. “In this study, we observed an increased severity of disease associated with infection with B.1.427 / B.1.429, including an increased risk of high oxygen requirements,” they wrote in their report, which is due to publish on a preprint server later this week. after public health officials in San Francisco examined it.

Chiu said it should be identified as a variant of concern and should be considered a study priority.

A second team from Unidos en Salud, a San Francisco-based nonprofit that offers rapid testing in the Mission District of San Francisco, tested 8,846 people during the month of January and sequenced the virus from 630 some samples. They also saw a rapid increase in the variant.

“Research results indicate that the L452R variant accounts for 53% of positive test samples collected between January 10 and 27. This is a significant increase from November when our sequencing indicated that this variant only accounted for 16. % of positive tests, “Dr. Diane Havlir, an infectious disease expert at UCSF who is helping conduct the study, said in a statement.

The Havlir team is also preparing results for publication.

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