Intra-Host SARS-CoV-2 Single-Nucleotide Variants Emerged During the Early Stage of COVID-19 Pandemic Forecast Population Fixing Mutations
January 2022
in “
Journal of Infection
”
Studysummary This article discusses intra-host single-nucleotide variants in SARS-CoV-2, highlighting their potential to inform on virus strain diversity, immune escape, and drug design, but it reports no new clinical results.
Our plain-language summary. Not medical advice or a treatment recommendation. Consult a qualified healthcare professional before changing treatment. Full disclaimer
The research examined the use of intra-host single-nucleotide variant variants (iSNVs) to predict mutations that could become fixed in the population during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic. The study involved 63 COVID-19 patients and identified 836 iSNV sites from 61 patients' specimens. As of November 8th, 2021, 99.16% of these iSNVs were found as fixed single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in sequences from global laboratories. 29 of these iSNVs increased in frequency and became consensus variants worldwide. The study concluded that monitoring iSNVs could help in tracking variants and predicting future immune-escape variants.
