Researchers find out why COVID-19 affects adults and spares children

Washington: Scientists have found out the key reason why the COVID-19 virus predominantly affects adults and older people while sparing the younger ones. This will further help in the development of new treatment strategies for coronavirus.

According to the researchers from the Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) in the US, children have lower levels of a receptor protein that the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 needs to invade airway epithelial cells in the lung.

The findings were published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. The scientists said that if efforts are made to block this protein, it will be a potential way to treat or prevent COVID-19 in older people.

Jennifer Sucre, a co-author of the study from VUMC said, "Our study provides a biologic rationale for why particularly infants and very young children seem to be less likely to either get infected or to have severe disease symptoms."

The researchers explained that after a viral particle is inhaled into the lungs, protein "spikes" attach to ACE2, a receptor on the surfaces of certain lung cells. A cellular protein, TMPRSS2 chops up the spike, helping the virus to fuse into the cell membrane and "break into" the cell.

Sucre said that their research has always focused on understanding lung development and how infant's lungs differ from adult lungs in their vulnerability to injury.

However, in the present study, they took the opposite approach and they were able to see how the developing lung by its differences is protected from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

The researchers used a technique called single-cell RNA-sequencing, where they detected the expression of genes in individual mice cells of tissues such as the lung. They tracked the expression of genes known to be involved in the body's response to COVID-19 over time.

The gene for ACE2 was expressed at low levels in the mouse lung, TMPRSS2 stood out as having a really striking trajectory of increased expression during development.

The scientists have confirmed a similar trajectory in TMPRSS2 expression in humans to what they had found in mice. They have obtained and analysed human lung specimens collected from donors of different ages.

The receptor protein is known for its role in the development of prostate cancer. According to the researchers, drugs that block the TMPRSS2 and which have been approved for the treatment of advanced prostate cancer are currently being tested clinically as potential treatments for the novel coronavirus.

The scientists do feel that TMPRSS2 could be a target for treatment for people at high risk of COVID exposure.

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