I always wonder this and maybe people in the comments here know the answer: If humans had the technology to eliminate all viruses on Earth, what would be the outcome? Do viruses keep other bad things in check? Would there be bad consequences if we eliminated all viruses?
Wont viruses just adapt and now we've got worse viruses as a result? Isn't this kind of why doctors don't like to prescribe antibiotics too often, because they become ineffective in the long run.
I'm genuinely asking, I'm a simple software dev not a doctor.
It was already invented [0], but the patents were bought by a small company in New Zealand (some kind of big pharma shell company?) who isn't seriously developing it and now appears to be defunct.
And the part where he says people with this mutation are more prone to bacterial infections is not worrying, because…? In a world of more and more antibiotic resistant bacteria, that does not seem like a good trade-off…
Persisting inflammation is not kind to bodies. All kinds of things could go wrong, and longterm consequences are easy to hypothesise.
Not saying this isn't worth researching but I'd expect big question marks around risk/reward.
Sounds like the first few scenes of every Zombie movie and TV show ever...
Interesting, and potentially very good. But I can't help but wonder, like at least one other commenter, that this might have unexpected effects if applied at a larger scale. I know some viruses kill bacteria for instance. I don't know, something about universal applicability makes me a little uneasy.
Paper appears to be paywalled. It is however an update to this preprint which is available on Biorxiv: "Broad-spectrum RNA antiviral inspired by ISG15-/- deficiency" https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.06.24.600468v1
My summary for programmers:
When you get a viral infection, immune cells make a signalling protein called a IFN-1 (Type I Interferon) cytokine, and this flips a boolean flag to True on a bunch of genes (interferon-stimulated genes or ISGs) that produce a bunch of proteins (hundreds) that control the infection. ISG15 is one of them and its role appears to be to downregulate and to limit the inflammation.
The paper title refers to a ISG15 deficiency, meaning if you are dificient in ISG15 that inflamation limitation goes away. But the paper is actually about how in people that naturally have a ISG15 deficiency, there is an always-on low level expression of some of these pro-inflamation genes. So they take that as a safe level.
The did RNA sequencing on experimental ISG15 deficient cells and from heatlhy individuals, identified the mutations, narrowed down to 10 genes (antiviral ones not inhibitors) that in combination significantly inhibited viral replication. They stuck the RNA for such genes in lipid nanoparticles such that they enter host cells, whose ribosomes happily read the RNA like a turing head reads a tape in base 20 and produce proteins encoded by these genes, similar to how the mRNA vaccine works.
So why not dose with the IFN-I directly? Three referenced papers show its "poorly tolerated with significant side effects" and all those downregulators that get expressed limit the inflammation response.
Disclaimer: IANAB (not a biologist) corrections might be due..
Sounds like they are boosting what body already does in case of a viral infection.
I wonder how different it is from interferon therapy - interferons are used to signal viral infection, so they also activate immunity.
The prospect of being able to use this against viruses like the one causing rabies is pretty exciting!
Isn't everyone just drinking bleach these days anyway?
What is the “current” scientifically approved and unbiased understanding about the negative effects of the COVID vaccines?
There seems to be a lot of information, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and information hiding at least in the perception, if not in reality.
I cannot imagine what society at large will have to deal with or what the reaction will be for or against an “everything” therapy, given what happened with Covid.
rfk gonna ban hammer this so fast
I don't think this is a good idea.
Broad-based inflammation delivered by lipid nanoparticle chock full of mRNA: what could possibly go wrong? I'll stick with monoclonal antibodies, thanks.
Oh, and here's what the ISG15 deficiency (the condition these mRNAs are there to simulate) does:
> Patients present...with infectious, neurologic or dermatologic features. Basal ganglia calcification is observed in all patients... The basal ganglia calcifications may cause epileptic seizures... The IFN-I inflammation may also manifest early in life as ulcerative skin lesions in the armpit, groin and neck regions. Finally, ISG15-deficiency leads to mendelian susceptibility to mycobacterial disease... [t]hese infections present as fistulizing lymphadenopathies and respiratory symptoms following BCG vaccination.
Yeah, about those antiviral superpowers...
> When he and his colleagues looked at the individuals’ immune cells, they could see encounters with all sorts of viruses—flu, measles, mumps, chickenpox. But the patients had never reported any overt signs of infection or illness.
Given that the article goes on to talk about mild persistent inflammation, is it possible that these individuals are sometimes asymptomatic but still capable of carrying/transmitting viruses at least temporarily? The article talks about potentially immunizing healthcare workers during a future pandemic, but if this was just allowing people to never develop symptoms (and not have to leave work) while having low-grade infections, would we accidentally create a work-force of Typhoid Marys?