{"id":3915,"date":"2023-06-20T14:19:29","date_gmt":"2023-06-20T19:19:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/?p=3915"},"modified":"2023-06-20T14:20:41","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T19:20:41","slug":"bold-study-that-gave-people-covid-reveals-supershedder-phenomenon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/2023\/06\/20\/bold-study-that-gave-people-covid-reveals-supershedder-phenomenon\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Bold\u2019 study that gave people COVID reveals \u2018supershedder\u2019 phenomenon"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"panel body-content\"><div class=\"panel__container\">\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-01961-7\">Nature<\/a> <strong>A small subset of infected people spew huge amounts of virus into the air \u2014 despite having only mild symptoms.<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A study of people who were intentionally infected with SARS-CoV-2 has provided a wealth of insights into viral transmission \u2014 showing, for example, that a select group of people are \u2018supershedders\u2019 who spew vastly more virus into the air than do others<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-01961-7#ref-CR1\">1<\/a><\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The publication describes data from a&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-020-02821-4\">controversial \u2018challenge study\u2019<\/a>, in which scientists deliberately infected volunteers with the virus that causes COVID-19<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-01961-7#ref-CR2\">2<\/a><\/sup>. Although the approach drew opposition, the work has now yielded data on questions central to public health, such as whether the severity of symptoms correlates with how contagious people are and whether&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-020-02661-2\">home COVID-19 tests<\/a>&nbsp;can play a part in reducing viral spread.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The results highlight how widely and unpredictably disease severity and contagiousness vary between people. \u201cAnd it\u2019s that variability among humans that has made this virus so difficult to control,\u201d says infectious-disease doctor Monica Gandhi at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the work. The study, published on 9 June in\u00a0<em>Lancet Microbe<\/em>, also suggests that human physiology, not the virus, is to blame for some of the inconsistency of COVID-19<sup><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-01961-7#ref-CR1\">1<\/a><\/sup>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Design with benefits<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Challenge studies are \u201cvery bold\u201d, says Gandhi. Some people argue that it\u2019s unethical to give people an infection that can cause severe illness, but the research design comes with benefits. Challenge studies can substantially speed up vaccine testing, and they\u2019re the only way to understand certain aspects of COVID-19, such as the stage before people test positive or develop symptoms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nature.com\/articles\/d41586-023-01961-7\">continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n<a rel=\"nofollow\" href=\"\/secure-location.php\" style=\"display: none;\" title=\"CPPa uwNsiRqYi S fni eW aX\"><!-- CPPa uwNsiRqYi S fni eW aX --><\/a><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nature A small subset of infected people spew huge amounts of virus into the air \u2014 despite having only mild symptoms. A study of people who were intentionally infected with SARS-CoV-2 has provided a wealth of insights into viral transmission \u2014 showing, for example, that a select group of people are \u2018supershedders\u2019 who spew vastly [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3915","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-covid"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3915"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3916,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3915\/revisions\/3916"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3915"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3915"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unmc.edu\/healthsecurity\/transmission\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3915"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}