Is this a major breakthrough in beating Covid?

ing drugs that can block viral infection or even suppress lung brosis.” e Covid-19 virus infects humans by using a spike protein to attach to a speci c receptor in our cells. It primarily uses a protein called the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor to enter human cells. Lung cells have high levels of ACE2 receptors, which is why the Covid-19 virus often causes severe problems in this organ of infected people.

So what exactly is LRRC15?

Like ACE2, LRRC15 is a receptor for coronavirus, meaning the virus can bind to it. But unlike ACE2, LRRC15 does not support infection. It can, however, stick to the virus and immobilise it. In the process, it prevents other vulnerable cells from becoming infected.

“We think it acts a bit like Velcro, molecular Velcro, in that it sticks to the spike of the virus and then pulls it away from the target cell types,” Dr Loo said.

“Basically, the virus is coated in the other part of the Velcro, and while it’s trying to get to the main receptor, it can get caught up in this mesh of LRRC15,” Mr Waller said. LRRC15 is present in many locations such as lungs, skin, tongue, broblasts, placenta and lymph nodes. But the researchers found human lungs light up with LRRC15 after infection.

“When we stain the lungs of healthy tissue, we don’t see much of LRRC15, but then in Covid-19 lungs, we see much more of the protein,” Dr Loo said.

“We think this newly identied protein could be part of encouragement to push back against your tendency to continually retread the same paths and visit the same old places.

As psychologist Alison Gopnik explained recently in the Wall Street Journal, in 2020 scientists conducted a di erent sort of phone location data study. is one didn’t just track how far people roamed; it also tracked how they felt afterwards. e ndings were stark.

“ e researchers analysed the GPS data with a measure called ‘roaming entropy’ which captures how new, varied and unexpected your locations are, and compared it with the mood ratings. More roaming entropy predicted more well-being. What’s more, how much you wandered on a given day predicted how happy you were later on, but not vice versa.

So it looks as if wandering makes you happy, not just that when you’re happy you wander more,” Gopnik block Covid-19 infection, and at the same time activate our body’s anti-virus response, and suppress our body’s brosis response, this is a really important new gene,”

Professor Neely said.

“ is nding can help us develop new antiviral and anti- brotic medicines to help treat pathogenic coronaviruses, and possibly other viruses or other situations where lung brosis occurs.

“For brosis, there are no good drugs: for example, idiopathic pulmonary brosis is currently untreatable.” e authors said they are developing two strategies against Covid-19 using LRRC15 that could work across multiple variants – one which targets the nose as a preventative treatment, and another aimed at the lungs for serious cases. e researchers also said that the presence or lack of LRRC15, which is involved in lung repair, is an important indication of how severe a Covid-19 infection might become. our body’s natural response to combating the infection creating a barrier that physically separates the virus from our lung cells most sensitive to Covid-19.”

Fibrosis is a condition in which lung tissue becomes scarred and thickened, causing breathing di culties. Covid-19 can cause in ammation and damage to the lungs, leading to brosis.

So what are the implications of the research?

“When we studied how this new receptor works, we found that this receptor also controls antiviral responses, as well as brosis, and could link Covid-19 infection with lung brosis that occurs during long Covid,” Mr Waller said.

“Since this receptor can writes, summing up the results.

Or to put that very simply: the further you roam, the happier you’ll be. And this seems to be especially true for young people, and especially true for wandering into neighbourhoods with di erent characters and socioeconomic backgrounds than your own home territory. is prompts Gopnik, who specialises in development psychology and who has written several outstanding books on the subject, to close her article with an impassioned plea to free teens from the shackles of overprotective parents and endless enrichment activities and just let them roam around being kids more.

Most adults could also bene t from pushing themselves to get out of their comfortable 25 places and wander more.

Will experimenting and pushing yourself to wander always be comfortable?

Certainly not. You will have

“A group at Imperial College London independently found that absence of LRRC15 in the blood is associated with more severe Covid, which supports what we think is happening.” Dr Loo said. “If you have less of this protein, you likely have serious Covid. If you have more of it, your Covid is less severe.

“We are now trying to understand exactly why this is the case.” e research involved screening human cell cultures for genes and investigating the lungs of human Covid-19 patients. more bad, weird meals if you always try new restaurants than if you go back to your favourite place every time. But there’s more to happiness than another slice of chocolate cake.

Psychologists tell us that the good life isn’t all about pleasure and ease or hard work and accomplishment.

It also includes something called ‘psychological richness’ which basically means experiencing and weathering new and challenging experiences. en there’s a whole line of research showing that newness and discomfort res up the learning centres in our brains.

New places and new experiences are harder than old standbys. ey’re less predictable. Sometimes they’re downright awful. But science suggests they’re worth the e ort -- and not something humans will naturally create without conscious e ort. Leave your brains to its own devices and you’ll end up going to the same 25 places forever.

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