Hepatitis C virus
The genetic basis for this ability remains to be explained, but the statistical evidence for it is strong.
Creationists would have us believe their putative intelligent [sic] designer not only designed viruses like the Hep C virus and the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus which caused COVID-19, but also designed our immune system to protect us from its parasitic viruses. If that were remotely true, not only would it mean their favourite deity is an incompetent fool but also a malevolent sadist, since not only did it design these viruses for the purpose of harming us, but then gave most of us an immune system which doesn't work very well through choice, having designed a better one for some people.
The Trinity College News release explains the background to the research and how the conclusion was arrived at:
Researchers worked with women infected by hepatitis C following exposure to contaminated anti-D medication in the 1970s. Some of these women exposed to the virus never showed symptoms and now – over 40 years on – the researchers believe they know why.
Scientists from Trinity have unearthed a secret that may explain why some people are able to resist viral infections, having screened the immune systems of women exposed to hepatitis C (HCV) through contaminated anti-D transfusions given over 40 years ago in Ireland.
The extraordinary work, just published in leading journal Cell Reports Medicine, has wide-ranging implications from improving our fundamental understanding of viral resistance to the potential design of therapies to treat infected people.
Between 1977-79 in Ireland, several thousand women were exposed to the hepatitis C virus through contaminated anti-D, which is a medication made using plasma from donated blood and given to Rhesus negative women who are pregnant with a Rhesus positive foetus. The medication prevents the development of antibodies that could be dangerous in subsequent pregnancies. Some of the anti-D used during the 1977-79 period was contaminated with hepatitis C.
From this outbreak, three groups of people were identifiable: those who were chronically infected; those who cleared the infection with an antibody response; and those who appeared protected against infection without making antibodies against hepatitis C.
The scientists ultimately recruited almost 40 women from the resistant group, alongside 90 women who were previously infected.We hypothesised that women who seemed to resist HCV infection must have an enhanced innate immune response, which is the ancient part of the immune system that acts as a first line of defence.
To test this we needed to make contact with women exposed to the virus over forty years ago and ask them to help us by allowing us to study their immune systems to hunt for scientific clues that would explain their differing responses.
After a nationwide campaign over 100 women came forward and we have gained some unique and important insights. That so many women – many of whom have lived with medical complications for a long time – were willing to help is testament to how much people want to engage with science and help pursue research with the potential to make genuine, positive impacts on society. We are deeply grateful to them.
Professor Cliona O’Farrelly, corresponding author
School of Biochemistry and Immunology
Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute
Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
In collaboration with the Institut Pasteur in Paris they then invited almost 20 women in each group to donate a blood sample that they stimulated with molecules that mimic viral infection and lead to activation of the innate immune system.
The lab’s efforts are now focused on leveraging these biological findings to unpick the genetics of viral resistance in the HCV donors. Their work on HCV resistance has already helped ignite international interest in resistance to other viral infections, including SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.By comparing the response of the resistant women to those who became infected, we found that resistant donors had an enhanced type I interferon response after stimulation. Type I interferons are a key family of antiviral immune mediators that play an important role in defence against viruses including hepatitis C and SARS-CoV-2, or COVID-19.
We think that the increased type I interferon production by our resistant donors, seen now almost 40 years after the original exposure to hepatitis C, is what protected them against infection.
These findings are important as resistance to infection is very much an overlooked outcome following viral outbreak, primarily because identifying resistant individuals is very difficult – since they do not become sick after viral exposure, they wouldn’t necessarily know that they were exposed. That’s why cohorts like this, though tragic in nature, are so valuable – they provide a unique opportunity to study the response to viral infections in an otherwise healthy population.
Jamie Sugrue, first-author PhD Candidate
School of Biochemistry and Immunology
Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute
Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
The O’Farrelly lab has expanded its search for virus-resistant individuals by joining in the COVID human genetic effort (www.covidhge.com) and by recruiting members of the public who have been heavily exposed to SARS-CoV-2 but never developed an infection (www.viralresistanceproject.com).
HighlightsThere are very many other examples in nature where, if species had been intelligently designed, the designer chose to use suboptimal versions of systems and processes when it had better ones it could have used. For example:
- Resistance to HCV is common in the Irish anti-D cohort
- VirScan provides a comprehensive assessment of all previous viral infections
- Resistance to HCV is associated with increased TLR3-induced IFN-I activity in blood
Summary
Natural resistance to infection is an overlooked outcome after hepatitis C virus (HCV) exposure. Between 1977 and 1979, 1,200 Rhesus D-negative Irish women were exposed to HCV-contaminated anti-D immunoglobulin. Here, we investigate why some individuals appear to resist infection despite exposure (exposed seronegative [ESN]). We screen HCV-resistant and -susceptible donors for anti-HCV adaptive immune responses using ELISpots and VirScan to profile antibodies against all know human viruses. We perform standardized ex vivo whole blood stimulation (TruCulture) assays with antiviral ligands and assess antiviral responses using NanoString transcriptomics and Luminex proteomics. We describe an enhanced TLR3-type I interferon response in ESNs compared with seropositive women. We also identify increased inflammatory cytokine production in response to polyIC in ESNs compared with seropositive women. These enhanced responses may have contributed to innate immune protection against HCV infection in our cohort.
- Elephants and sharks are almost immune to cancers.
- Bats have a vastly superior immune system to that of other mammals.
- Most mammals, unlike those on the same branch of the simian evolutionary tree as humans are able to synthesis Vitamin C, but the gene for the enzyme required for the last stage in the four-stage metabolic process is broken in humans and all our relatives on the same branch, so we die of scurvy if we don’t get enough Vitamin C in our diets.
- Birds have a much more efficient respiratory system to mammals so some can fly unaided at heights at which humans would require advanced life support systems and can fly hundreds of miles at a time without resting or suffering oxygen deficit and muscle fatigue.
- Some bird such as peregrine falcons and eagles have visual acuity of which we can only dream, being able to resolve news print at the distance of a mile.
- Fish have a respiratory system which enables them to stay underwater indefinitely, but all the vertebrates such as whales, turtles and seals which have returned to the water from the land, have to make do with a terrestrial respiratory system which means they need to return to the surface to breathe at regular intervals, or drown.
So it should come as no surprise that most humans have an inferior immune system when a better one exists and is given to some of us on an apparently random basis, instead of all of us having the better system.
Of course, the more vicarious explanation is that this situation is the result of evolution by natural selection, and maybe that process is still in progress, as waves of virus pandemics such as COVID-19 are environmental selectors ensuring more people in future generations have this improved immune system. However, the precise details still await the identification of the genetic basis for this ability to resist virus infections and the discovery of what else these genes, or ones linked to them, control, before the full evolutionary dynamics can be appreciated. As it is, the childish notion of intelligent design by a magic designer makes no sense at all, unless the designer is an incompetent, malicious fool.
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