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Scientists say a person’s “ dose ” with coronavirus can determine the severity and severity of their illness.
This means that infection with a very small amount of the virus can cause no symptoms, without a cough, fever, or shortness of breath.
However, a moderate dose can cause a person a mild to moderate infection, and a very high dose can cause hospitalization or death.
Irene Bromage, assistant professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth, told CNN that there is no specific number of viral particles needed to cause disease – but the more particles you have, the more you are capable of entering and infecting at least one cell, thus triggering a cascade. Events.
“If you hit an animal with a low enough dose, it would be able to repel it without catching any disease at all. If you get a magic number from an infectious dose, then an infection will occur and that animal will succumb to the disease. disease of that specific pathogen. But if you infect it with more than one dose, “he added. “Infectious, like a high dose of virus, for example, leads to more serious results. So the dose becomes really important.”
Promage explains that a person may not receive a high dose all at once, but it can happen over several days.
This is in line with the redefinition of “ close contact ” last month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to include several short exposures of an infected person, which total 15 minutes.
The agency had previously said that ‘close contact’ consisted of 15 minutes of continuous exposure to a person with ‘Covid-19’.
“Some people are speculating about this: is that why bus drivers or people who work in emergency rooms, for example, are more likely to have negative consequences,” Promage said.
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However, some experts add that the amount of virus a person infects is not the only factor that determines the extent of their disease.
Dr Sarah Cady, clinical researcher in viral immunology at the University of Cambridge in the UK, says the reaction of the immune system also plays an important role.
“If the immune system is not sufficiently activated, the virus can replicate itself more quickly,” she wrote in The Conversation.
On the other hand, if the immune system is overactivated, it can damage healthy tissue.
And basic medical conditions, such as obesity and diabetes, can increase the risk of developing a severe case of “Covid-19”.
And a 2015 study found that people who slept less than five hours a night were more likely to have a cold than those who slept seven hours or more.
“We don’t know if these results can be applied to SARS-CoV-2, because the new coronavirus is completely different from rhinovirus. But we can assume that the immune responses of extremely overworked health workers will not be perfect compared to someone who loves, ”Cady wrote. In good comfort at home. “
Monica Gandhi and George Rotherward, in the New England Journal of Medicine, said people who wear masks breathe much less particulate matter. This can cause inhalation of a lower dose and prevent dangerous infection.
And they said that if the theory was proven correct, it could explain the increased incidence of asymptomatic coronavirus infection.
Source: Daily Mail
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