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Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges
The acquisition of a high number of mutations, notably, the gain of two mutations L452R and F486V in RBD, and the ability to evade vaccine/natural infection-induced immunity suggests that Omicron is continuing to use “immune-escape potential” as an evolutionary space to maintain a selection advantag...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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MDPI
2022
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9781647/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36560614 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v14122610 |
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author | Quadir, Neha Singh, Jasdeep Alam, Anwar Malik, Asrar Ahmad Rahman, Syed Asad Hira, Subhash Ehtesham, Nasreen Zafar Sundar, Durai Hasnain, Seyed Ehtesham |
author_facet | Quadir, Neha Singh, Jasdeep Alam, Anwar Malik, Asrar Ahmad Rahman, Syed Asad Hira, Subhash Ehtesham, Nasreen Zafar Sundar, Durai Hasnain, Seyed Ehtesham |
author_sort | Quadir, Neha |
collection | PubMed |
description | The acquisition of a high number of mutations, notably, the gain of two mutations L452R and F486V in RBD, and the ability to evade vaccine/natural infection-induced immunity suggests that Omicron is continuing to use “immune-escape potential” as an evolutionary space to maintain a selection advantage within the population. Despite the low hospitalizations and lower death rate, the surges by these variants may offset public health measures and disrupt health care facilities as seen recently in Portugal and the USA. Interestingly these BA.4/BA.5 variants have been found to be more severe than the earlier-emerged Omicron variants. We believe that aggressive COVID-19 surveillance using affordable testing strategies might actually help understand the evolution and transmission pattern of new variants. The sudden dip in reporting of new cases in some of the low- and middle-income countries is an alarming situation and needs to be addressed as this could lead to undetected transmission of future variants of interest/concern of SARS-CoV-2 in large population settings, including advent of a ‘super’ virus. It would be interesting to examine the possible role/influence, if any, of the two different kinds of vaccines, the spike protein-based versus the inactivated whole virus, in the evolution of BA.4/BA.5. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-9781647 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2022 |
publisher | MDPI |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-97816472022-12-24 Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges Quadir, Neha Singh, Jasdeep Alam, Anwar Malik, Asrar Ahmad Rahman, Syed Asad Hira, Subhash Ehtesham, Nasreen Zafar Sundar, Durai Hasnain, Seyed Ehtesham Viruses Commentary The acquisition of a high number of mutations, notably, the gain of two mutations L452R and F486V in RBD, and the ability to evade vaccine/natural infection-induced immunity suggests that Omicron is continuing to use “immune-escape potential” as an evolutionary space to maintain a selection advantage within the population. Despite the low hospitalizations and lower death rate, the surges by these variants may offset public health measures and disrupt health care facilities as seen recently in Portugal and the USA. Interestingly these BA.4/BA.5 variants have been found to be more severe than the earlier-emerged Omicron variants. We believe that aggressive COVID-19 surveillance using affordable testing strategies might actually help understand the evolution and transmission pattern of new variants. The sudden dip in reporting of new cases in some of the low- and middle-income countries is an alarming situation and needs to be addressed as this could lead to undetected transmission of future variants of interest/concern of SARS-CoV-2 in large population settings, including advent of a ‘super’ virus. It would be interesting to examine the possible role/influence, if any, of the two different kinds of vaccines, the spike protein-based versus the inactivated whole virus, in the evolution of BA.4/BA.5. MDPI 2022-11-23 /pmc/articles/PMC9781647/ /pubmed/36560614 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v14122610 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
spellingShingle | Commentary Quadir, Neha Singh, Jasdeep Alam, Anwar Malik, Asrar Ahmad Rahman, Syed Asad Hira, Subhash Ehtesham, Nasreen Zafar Sundar, Durai Hasnain, Seyed Ehtesham Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges |
title | Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges |
title_full | Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges |
title_fullStr | Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges |
title_full_unstemmed | Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges |
title_short | Evolution of SARS-CoV-2: BA.4/BA.5 Variants Continues to Pose New Challenges |
title_sort | evolution of sars-cov-2: ba.4/ba.5 variants continues to pose new challenges |
topic | Commentary |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9781647/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36560614 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/v14122610 |
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