Does this gene actually offer any protection?

[alreadytaken]

Around 10% of europeans carry a gene that provides some protection against HIV. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/03/050325234239.htm

covid-19 has been said to aim at the same enzyme as HIV. metro.co.uk/2020/02/27/coronavirus-hiv-like-mutation-helps-attack-human-cells-scientists-claim-12314129/

Any serious scientists around who can comment on whether this gene may offer some protection against Covid-19?

Well it could do. This illness has some protein spikes similar to HIV and Ebola. There has been huge success treating it with HIV drugs in China.

Thanks for the reply. I'm not up with exactly how this virus works but it looked interesting.

My Dad talks about the Derbyshire gene. My mum is form Derbyshire and never catches anything. I used to think she was just more stoic but I have come to realise that she never gets a cough, cold, or sickness bug. DS2 seems to have it too, he never catches what the rest of us have.

I didn't realise there was science behind it!

I'm from Derbyshire and catch everything! Where's my Derbyshire gene!

Dunno but it sounds nice. I never get Norovirus or even food poisoning when I eat the same thing as people who are then throwing up all night, who knows!

Maybe your ancestors successfully self isolated during the plague Floofen

Plague/Derbyshire/Aids

Hi my son is homozygous to this gene which puts him in 1%?population so I have read up on it before now . Unfortunately he has had seasonal flu before so I don’t think it protects against it . My husband and are heterozygous for it so we have some protection against hiv but my son might have full protection . It’s an interesting gene . I have told him to consider bone marrow donation when he reaches adulthood

Based on those links, I'd say probably not. The genetic mutation described in that paper prevents HIV entering immune cells, whereas it's believed that the coronavirus binds to ACE-2 receptors on cells in the lungs.

True it does bond to receptors on the lungs first.

Should have said that the mutation was also to a different cell receptor, CCR5 delta 32, which HIV targets.

So to summarise - the 2 viruses seem to target different cells and different receptors.

Not a “serious scientist” but I have a serious interest in this sort of stuff!! I believe that with any virus there will be some who are resistant to catching it. As @Reallybadidea said, those who are resistant to HIV can have the CCR5 delta 32 mutation. This is like the door into our CD4 cells (type of white blood cell) that allows the virus entry being tight shut or defective in some way. The coronavirus uses the ACE-2, which is a different receptor to enter cells. Eyam in Derbyshire was all to do with the delta 32 mutation – according to the article 14% had it when tested in 2007.

I’d never heard of furin until recently, and it’s quite difficult to find a reliable easy to read guide to it. Furin can activate many mammalian, viral and bacterial illnesses – see the diagram at Figure 1 and explanation here: onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/cti2.1073
My understanding is that’s it’s to do with the breakdown of proteins allowing fusion leading to activation of the illness – in the case of the HIV virus it’s gp160 which is a precursor of the envelope glycoproteins gp120 & gp41.

I’ve attached a pic from i-base showing the HIV lifecycle where you can see the gp41/gp120 proteins & the CCR5 receptors. As you can see the virus uses enzymes at different stages to make more copies of itself.

This leads onto HIV drugs currently being used to try to help coronavirus patients. Kaletra is being trialled atm along with many other drugs (remdesivir is one which has been shown to help Ebola patients.) Kaletra is 2 drugs - lopinavir & ritonavir. Both are protease inhibitors (ritonavir has a weaker action and is used as a booster to lopinavir). If you look at the diagram again you will see how it works at No 5 and the point at with it prevents the virus from making new copies of itself. Written lifecycle here: i-base.info/guides/art-in-pictures/the-hiv-lifecycle-in-detail

@Purplewhitelie There has been huge success treating it with HIV drugs in China
I’d be interested to see where you’ve seen this? I’ve noticed articles saying it’s cured people, but, for example, this one, (also mentioned in other papers, sorry about the choice but this one explains it quite well and there’s some good stuff on trials being done, length of time they might take etc) was also treated with other medications, including those for MS, and there’s nothing to say the patient mightn’t have recovered anyway. www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-8077889/Coronavirus-patient-recovers-treated-HIV-drug.html#comments

I’m actually on aprotease inhibitor atm (though not Kaletra) so it might be quite interesting if my family were to all contract coronavirus and the effects were less for me than them - who knows

remdesivir looks the most promising drug so far.

I'd never heard of the Derbyshire gene until recently or of it's relevance to stem cell donation. I wondered if it would explain why Wuhan was hit worse than Europe, or if that was down to the slow initial response/ higher level of smokers. Italy has a lower incidence of the gene than most of the rest of Europe.

I need to do a lot more reading.

It’s an interesting area. Certain genes do make us immune to some illnesses.

My DH has never vomited or had a sickness bug. Some people have immunity to norovirus. I’ve had it and shared a bed and bathroom with him and he was still fine! DS1 is similar.

I do hope there is some natural immunity down to genes to this virus.

This gene is just one option. There is also serious speculation that the reason why the cases aren’t rising very quickly in India is because of the protective effect of a high NK cell count (Indian people are more likely to have this which is protective against some forms of Cancer too). Ultimately nobody is immune to this disease as it has never been seen before in humans - some people may have fewer symptoms during this initial outbreak but we have no idea if this is a good or bad thing. For example there are some viral illnesses that become more serious and life threatening with multiple exposures

We dont know yet if anyone is immune to this disease. Those with two copies of the Derbyshire gene are immune to HIV although it wasnt around previously. There probably will prove to be some genes that either give immunity or reduce the impact - but understanding how Covid-19 enters the body and how it replicates would be crucial to identifying whether such genes exist.

The HIV ‘immunity gene’ also causes autoimmune diseases like RA, Lupus, and Scleroderma. The treatment of those conditions make you more susceptable to HIV as they work by supressing the immune systemz

So there are swings and roundabouts when it comes to gene therapy for HIV. In many ways HIV is now more treatable as a chronic condition than RA or Lupus

This article seems to have a different take on RA lupus - no difference www.jrheum.org/content/37/11/2226.short and this no impact on sclerodema www.researchgate.net/profile/Javier_Martin4/publication/51730244_No_evidence_for_association_between_the_CCR5Delta32CCR5_polymorphism_and_systemic_sclerosis/links/0deec53c8c53b0bd1e000000/No-evidence-for-association-between-the-CCR5-Delta32CCR5-polymorphism-and-systemic-sclerosis.pdf

That's really interesting. Thanks for sharing that @ElderAve