It turned out that the absence of symptoms of COVID-19 may mean that the body is not trying to fight the infection, since it is simply unable to recognize the causative agent of the disease. About this edition told the acting Andrey Vasin, Director of the Institute of Biomedical Systems and Biotechnology, SPbPU.
If an infected person does not have any symptoms, then his body has not started protective processes.
Vasin called it “disease tolerance”: “The body is trying to neutralize the consequences of a meeting with a pathogen as soon as possible. To do this, two strategies are used: to quickly and effectively get rid of the pathogen itself, so that it does not have time to start pathological processes, or to reduce the damage or changes caused by the infection. In the second case, they talk about the formation of tolerance to the disease. ”
Earlier in China, cases of asymptomatic COVID-19 in patients have already been described in detail. They had no clinical signs, but, as it turned out, the virus developed in their bodies for a long time.
The asymptomatic course is not a “highlight” of the coronavirus – other infectious diseases, such as tuberculosis and cholera, can behave in a similar way. Without any manifesting symptoms, people with insufficiently active immunity tolerate and spread them.
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