The coronavirus undergoes mutations after treating patients with blood plasma. Bloomberg reports this with reference to a study by scientists from the UK.
According to experts, blood plasma obtained from COVID-19 patients could have had enough effect on the virus to cause it to mutate. The result of the SARS-CoV-2 changes was a lower susceptibility of the virus to the immune system antibodies that usually fight infection.
British doctors treated a patient who had previously had cancer for 102 days for the coronavirus. Doctors tracked how the virus changed in his body based on the tests taken from the patient. At first, he was given the drug redeliver, after which experts did not find serious mutations of SARS-CoV-2. However, after a course of treatment with blood plasma, the virus has undergone significant metamorphoses, including changes in the key “spike protein” that the virus uses to infect healthy cells.
The study also says that multiple mutations can occur in patients with weakened immune systems and chronic infections.
“When a virus has the ability to stay in the human body for a long time and multiply, it learns to fight the immune system,” said Ravindra Gupta, professor of clinical microbiology at the Cambridge Institute of Therapeutic Immunology and Infectious Diseases.
Experts said that the treatment with plasma did not harm the patient, but it did not have any beneficial effect on the body.
