Controlling long-term SARS-CoV-2 infections can slow viral evolution and reduce the risk of treatment failure.

ABSTRACT: The rapid emergence and expansion of novel SARS-CoV-2 variants threatens our ability to achieve herd immunity for COVID-19. These novel SARS-CoV-2 variants often harbor multiple point mutations, conferring one or more evolutionarily advantageous traits, such as increased transmissibility, immune evasion and longer infection duration. In a number of cases, variant emergence has been linked to long-term infections in individuals who were either immunocompromised or treated with convalescent plasma. In this paper, we used a stochastic evolutionary modeling framework to explore the emergence of fitter variants of SARS-CoV-2 during long-term infections. We found that increased viral load and infection duration favor emergence of such variants. While the overall probability of emergence and subs

SUBMITTER: Van Egeren D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8604936 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature