Version 1
: Received: 2 December 2023 / Approved: 4 December 2023 / Online: 4 December 2023 (10:04:22 CET)
How to cite:
Manuto, L.; Bado, M.; Cola, M.; Vanzo, E.; Antonello, M.; Mazzotti, G.; Pacenti, M.; Cordioli, G.; Sasset, L.; Cattelan, A.M.; Toppo, S.; Lavezzo, E. SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Evolution Is Not Favoured by Immune System Deficiencies. Preprints2023, 2023120174. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0174.v1
Manuto, L.; Bado, M.; Cola, M.; Vanzo, E.; Antonello, M.; Mazzotti, G.; Pacenti, M.; Cordioli, G.; Sasset, L.; Cattelan, A.M.; Toppo, S.; Lavezzo, E. SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Evolution Is Not Favoured by Immune System Deficiencies. Preprints 2023, 2023120174. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0174.v1
Manuto, L.; Bado, M.; Cola, M.; Vanzo, E.; Antonello, M.; Mazzotti, G.; Pacenti, M.; Cordioli, G.; Sasset, L.; Cattelan, A.M.; Toppo, S.; Lavezzo, E. SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Evolution Is Not Favoured by Immune System Deficiencies. Preprints2023, 2023120174. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0174.v1
APA Style
Manuto, L., Bado, M., Cola, M., Vanzo, E., Antonello, M., Mazzotti, G., Pacenti, M., Cordioli, G., Sasset, L., Cattelan, A.M., Toppo, S., & Lavezzo, E. (2023). SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Evolution Is Not Favoured by Immune System Deficiencies. Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0174.v1
Chicago/Turabian Style
Manuto, L., Stefano Toppo and Enrico Lavezzo. 2023 "SARS-CoV-2 Intra-host Evolution Is Not Favoured by Immune System Deficiencies" Preprints. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202312.0174.v1
Abstract
During the COVID-19 pandemic, immunosuppressed patients showed prolonged SARS-CoV-2 infections, with several studies reporting the accumulation of mutations in the viral genome. The weakened immune system present in these individuals, along with the effect of antiviral thera-pies, are thought to create a favourable environment for intra-host viral evolution and have been linked to the emergence of new viral variants, which strongly challenged the containment measures and some therapeutic treatments. To assess whether an impaired immunity could lead to an increased instability of viral genomes, longitudinal nasopharyngeal swabs were collected from eight immunocompromised patients and fourteen non-immunocompromised subjects, all undergoing SARS-CoV-2 infection. Intra-host viral evolution was compared between the two groups through deep sequencing, exploiting a probe-based enrichment method to minimize the possibility of artefactual mutations commonly generated in amplicon-based methods, which heavily rely on PCR amplification. Although, as expected, immunocompromised patients expe-rienced significantly longer infections, the acquisition of novel intra-host viral mutations was similar between the two groups. Moreover, a thorough analysis of viral quasispecies showed that the variability of viral populations in the two groups is comparable not only at the consensus level, but also when considering low frequency mutations. This study suggests that a compro-mised immune system alone does not affect SARS-CoV-2 within-host genomic variability.
Copyright:
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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