Interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses

by Olivier Terrier

The emergence of SARS-CoV-2 at the end of 2019 and the ensuing pandemic have profoundly changed our lives and our daily lives. This pandemic has also completely altered the epidemiology of other respiratory viruses. In this study, recently published in JID, we looked at the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses, such as influenza viruses (IAV) or respiratory syncytial virus (RSV).

We performed different scenarios of simultaneous or sequential infections in an experimental model of reconstituted human epithelium. Our results show that the timing, sequence and nature of the innate immune response are key elements that determine the interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses.

To better understand these complex interactions at the scale of the respiratory epithelium, these data constitute an interesting starting point to explore the various models set up with much more global approaches, in particular by calling upon “omics” approaches (e.g., transcriptional profiling, metabolomics) and also with mathematical modeling approaches.

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