MADRID, 25 Mar. (EUROPA PRESS) –
A study in mice has revealed that the immune response mounted against tuberculosis prevents them from developing COVID-19, according to the researchers published in the open access journal PLOS Pathogens.
Currently, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis, ‘Mycobacterium tuberculosis’, and the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, are the leading causes of death from infectious diseases worldwide.
Tuberculosis is widespread, and scientists have wondered if the immune response triggered by this serious respiratory infection could protect people from developing COVID-19. To find out, they worked with two different strains of mice and infected them with ‘M. tuberculosis’.
They then exposed the mice to the COVID-19 virus and monitored them for signs of infection. They found that the mice with tuberculosis showed no signs of COVID-19, likely because the pre-existing immune response to tuberculosis prevented the virus from proliferating in the lungs.
Taken together, the results demonstrate that tuberculosis infection makes the lungs inhospitable to the COVID-19 virus in mice. If the same is true in humans, this finding may be one of the reasons why few cases of individuals with tuberculosis and COVID-19 have been reported in the absence of other complications.
The findings may also explain why countries tend to have high infection rates of either COVID-19 or tuberculosis, but not both. The researchers propose that future research focus on the interaction between COVID-19 and tuberculosis infections in humans.
“Tuberculosis and COVID are pandemics that affect all parts of the world Richard Robinson of The Ohio State University (United States) and author of the trial–. Our study reflects the work of a diverse and talented group of scientists from OSU to better understand how these two diseases influence each other, making it a surprising observation that mice with tuberculosis are resistant to COVID in a laboratory setting.”
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