West Michigan's Morning News
A New COVID Study with Dr. Applegate
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You know, we haven't talked about COVID for a long time and it seems like when the pandemic was over, was on. That was all we talked about and then when it was over, we don't talk about it anymore. But one of the big questions that we always had in medicine was why did some people get COVID? Why did some people get it so badly? And why did some people never get COVID despite being exposed, you know, maybe more than like anyone else? I was, you know, I never got COVID told after the pandemic was over, believe it or not, that I got COVID. So that was a big question in medicine. So they did a research project that I know you would have loved to sign up for Steve in the UK. They took volunteers and they actually inoculated them with COVID. It took a nasal spray and shot COVID up their nose. Oh, I would like to be the person that gives them the COVID. I mean, that's more fun than getting the COVID. Exactly. So that was really good and a really good project. They did the original strain of COVID to take a look at this. And they found that there were indeed three groups. There were people that developed a sustained infection. There were people that developed a transient infection, which means they had some symptoms, but it went over, you know, like a cold in a week or 10 days. And then there were some people, again, just like we saw in the real world, that got no symptoms at all. They had what they call an abortive infection. So they looked at these three groups of people and then they took a look at why? Why did this happen? Well, not surprisingly, it all dealt with your immune system and two parts of your immune system were involved. One is that if you had just the transient infection and a little bit later, if you had a sustained infection, that you had a strong immune response, cellular response, which means your white cells really kicked in. And so it depended how quickly they did. But some people, it just came right away against COVID virus. It was just almost an immediate response, which was interesting. And they also found out that these people tend to have a special gene, unlike most people do, called the HLA-DQA2 gene. If you believe they can get that specific, but they found that they had this gene, which really helped them if they never got an infection of fighting off the COVID virus. And the second thing they found is that these people developed quickly a blocker. Now, this blocker is called Interferon. I used to do some research on this when I was young and thin and still at here at Michigan State. And this is a transmitter protein that goes from one cell to another cell. And the way to think about it, it's a warning protein. It says, "Hey, this COVID virus has come and get up your immune system, get ready to rock and roll. You want to fight off this virus." So if you had both of those, you never, if you had high levels of the Interferon and if you had this gene that really helped your immune response, that you would never get COVID symptoms. And if you just had one of these, if you just relied on the Interferon or the gene, you would get a minor infection. And if you had neither, those are the people that really got infected with really bad symptoms. So we've come a long way to see what we saw in the pandemic, which is some people never got anything. Some people got some symptoms and some people got really sick. So again, it all deals with your immune response to the COVID virus. So that, to me, was very fascinating, very interesting research. Those people get paid to get sick. I hope. Oh. Because if they let me go. Yeah. Yeah. I imagine could they were, they called them volunteers, but most volunteers for something like this would receive compensation. So I don't know. I did, you know, sold pieces of my body when I was in medical school to help pay the tuition. But I don't know if I would have signed up for this, knowing how badly some people got sick from COVID. I mean, some people who have been died from it. So I don't know if I would have signed up for this project, but yeah, they probably got compensated for it. By the way, coming up next week with Doc Applegate segment, just what pieces of his body did himself. Dr. Jim Applegate, always great stuff. Thanks for your time today. My pleasure.