The emergence and understanding of SARS-Cov-2, causative agent of CoVID-19
Since the beginning of the year 2020, I have been carefully observing and listening to various points of views from my fellow human beings across the world, each with diverse backgrounds and professions, about the unprecedented SARS-CoV-2 induced CoVID-19 infectious disease with its subsequent complications. People such as politicians, practicing physicians, public health authorities, epidemiologists, pharmacologists, businessmen, theologists and whistleblowers. Collectively, the scope of their presentations appeared to aim at their self-interest, and popularity, rather than fully understanding the vicious underlying mechanism of the SARS-CoV-2, the variation, and complications of immunological challenges, as well as unique individual biological and diverse response to the infectious and therapeutic agents. Also, the actual long-term scientific and precision medical approach, which is essential for suitable treatment and ultimate/reliable preventive measurement at a personalized level has not been applied.
There is no doubt, that social distancing, mask and urgent reliable treatments including the search for a proper vaccine, as well as spiritual guidance and love and caring play an important role to limit CoVID-19, but it is also crucial to consider the above notion, as well as consideration of the fact that SARS-CoV-2 virus has an unstable genome and potentially can mutate to the new pathogenic agent again, which may be unresponsive to the present treatment including the vaccine for the wild type CoV-19 disease. With SARS-CoV-2 infections, certain individuals remained asymptomatic, others exhibited mild infection and quickly recovered, and many developed complications, and some other group of people lost their life. In parallel, a group of patients was empirically medicated and many of them developed serious complications and significant numbers of them died. Similarly, there are some reservations and thoughts about the current vaccines – at the present there is some apparent variation among different individual responses to vaccination, which will be discussed at a later date. In this context, infectious agents particularly viruses or vaccination, are challenging forces on our biological system with a variable response at the individual level, especially regarding the genomic and immune system, which may alter gene and/or gene expression to cause mild or severe and permanent disorder(s) or induce inflammation and inflammatory diseases. Usually, wild animal viruses exert a more severe impact. This can be partially explained by the lack of our pre-existing immunity to them. In this regard, we should consider preventive measurement as briefed in the following paragraphs.
With the continuous advances in scientific findings, we have learned that our system biology is interacting and highly dependent upon the ecosystem. When this relation is disturbed or interrupted, the balance of our life will be changed, and this situation drives us to an unpleasant condition called state of disorderly or cessation of life. In this context, most vicious infectious agents that become adapted to humans are from the animal kingdom, outside of human beings, and cause severe infectious diseases due to our behavior in the ecosystem, such as:
1. Global warming, which results in climate change. For example, a moderate climate suddenly becomes a tropical one. Subsequently, a new tropical climate tends to cause the recruitment of various animals carrying particular infectious agent(s) to translocate to humans for the first time to induce critical complications, due to the individual’s immune system that has not been previously exposed to the agent.
2. Displacement of forest and natural habitats with freeways and commercial and industrial buildings encourage local animals, which serve as an infectious agent reservoir, to have close contact and infect humans with new infectious agents.
3. Polluted industrialized environments exert unpleasant forces on our genomic and beyond the genomic system to render us susceptible to various illnesses or succumb to infectious diseases or due to chemically induced immune aberration or viral-induced inflammation causes serious injury or death.
4. Inequality in the socioeconomic situation, including poor housing, inappropriate nutritional intake, poor hygiene, use of drug of abuse, emotional and biological stress factors also serve as a leading force in susceptibility to infectious disease, which potentially it can lead to serious complications.
5. Acute or chronic diseases, improper or incompatible medication, bad nutrition, drug abuse or unhealthy lifestyle, as well as old age, are critical factors in altering our system biology, including the immune system, to render us susceptible to infectious agents with poor outcomes.
Conclusive remarks
Our goal is to understand, treat and maintain high-quality of life for each individual, uniquely tailored to the environment, its changes, and its forces acting on us, and to interact peacefully and constructively with the ecosystem and consider every element in this world including our system biology.
Vali Kermani, Ph.D., ASCP, D., ABMLI