{"id":178181,"date":"2023-12-12T15:23:03","date_gmt":"2023-12-12T21:23:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/scientists-identify-interferon-gamma-as-potential-sars-cov-2-antiviral"},"modified":"2023-12-12T15:23:03","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T21:23:03","slug":"scientists-identify-interferon-gamma-as-potential-sars-cov-2-antiviral","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2023\/12\/scientists-identify-interferon-gamma-as-potential-sars-cov-2-antiviral","title":{"rendered":"Scientists Identify Interferon-gamma as Potential SARS-CoV-2 Antiviral"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/scientists-identify-interferon-gamma-as-potential-sars-cov-2-antiviral2.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Conditioning the lungs with interferon-gamma, a natural immune system protein (cytokine) best known for fighting bacterial infections, appears to be a strong antiviral for SARS-CoV-2, according to National Institutes of Health scientists and colleagues. Their new study, published in <em>Nature Communications<\/em>, shows in two different mouse models that when a bacterial infection triggers the release of interferon-gamma in the lungs, those animals subsequently are protected from infection by SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. The investigators further report that using recombinant interferon-gamma in the nose of study mice at the time of viral exposure substantially reduces SARS-CoV-2 infection and COVID disease.<\/p>\n<p>The lead project scientists suggest testing interferon-gamma further, alone and in combination with other treatments, to limit early SARS-CoV-2 infection in people. They also hypothesize that people with prior bacterial infections that naturally release interferon-gamma in their lungs may be less susceptible to COVID-19.<\/p>\n<p>NIH\u2019s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) led the project with collaborators at Malaghan Institute of Medical Research in New Zealand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Conditioning the lungs with interferon-gamma, a natural immune system protein (cytokine) best known for fighting bacterial infections, appears to be a strong antiviral for SARS-CoV-2, according to National Institutes of Health scientists and colleagues. Their new study, published in Nature Communications, shows in two different mouse models that when a bacterial infection triggers the release [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":662,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,1495],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biotech-medical","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/662"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}