immune regulation by helminths and the microbiota with SARS-Cov2 infection

National Institute Of Allergy And Infectious Diseases

Investigators

Linked publications & trials

Abstract

It is unclear why some individuals infected with Covid-19 are asymptomatic while others develop severe hyper-inflammation, severe acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) and multi-organ failure that can be fatal. Additionally, there is considerable variation in the pathogenesis and severity of Covid-19 globally. The effect of parasitic helminths on the disease pathogenesis and immune response following exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (as well as SARS-CoV-2 vaccines) is unknown. We initiated a cross-sectional household study in Chennai, India, to study the immunological effects of helminth coinfection and the microbiota on CoV2 seropositive individuals. Since this study began as the study population started to get vaccinated, we could also investigate the effects of helminth infection on vaccination. We have enrolled approximately 200 households and 600 study participants. Epidemiological data is under evaluation, as well as selection of samples for further immunological analyses. In addition to these human epidemiological studies, we started murine studies to assess the effect of helminth infection on COVID disease outcome and pathogenesis. In preliminary experiment started in, we observed that K18 ACE2 transgenic mice previously infected with the rodent helminth, N. brasiliensis, had better survival outcomes with lower viral titres and higher percentage and number of antigen specific CD8 T cells than their uninfected controls. Murine studies provide us an opportunity to be able to rigorously assess the role of previous helminth induced environmental skewing of the pulmonary tissues on differences in immune response to SARS-CoV-2. We hypothesize that tissue imprinting by parasitic helminths affects the disease pathogenesis and outcome following exposure to SarCoV2.