Living in close contact with cattle and dogs can help our bodies in the battle against coronavirus. This has been demonstrated by an Italian research group. The study, whose results were published in the scientific journal Microbes and Infection of the Institut Pasteur in Paris, reveals important similarities between the proteins that trigger the immune response in humans and in animals.

The investigation is based on the premise that the structure of coronaviruses is entirely surrounded by proteins that the virus uses to identify the cells to attack and subsequently infect. All viruses in this category rely on a "spike protein", that is, an "anchoring" protein that enters the target cell, thereby triggering the immune defences of the infected individual.

For this reason, researchers from the Magna Graecia University of Catanzaro, the University of Milan and Cattolica del sacro cuore, together with the Covid Research Group of Professor Andrea Urbani and Professor Maurizio Sanguinetti, president of the European Society of Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, decided to analyse these proteins genomically, in order to look for similarities in the immune response of humans and other living species such as bats, pangolins, dogs and cattle.

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Cattle and dogs as a protective shield

A strong similarity between the spike proteins of human coronavirus and those of the dog and the cow has given rise to the hypothesis that exposure to these domestic animals may endow us with natural immune defences capable of attenuating the symptoms of a potential Covid-19 infection. Specifically, the researchers found protein compatibility rates of 100 per cent between dog and human, and 80 per cent between cattle and human.

The study highlighted that, from a protein standpoint — the domain in which the immune response is triggered — living in close contact with cattle and dogs can form a kind of "protective shield" in humans. "A predisposition, that is," the researchers explained, "of the immune system to react better and more promptly against a new disease such as this one, perhaps precisely because the human organism may already have been stimulated in the past by contact with other similar animal coronaviruses".

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New research and further developments

Needless to say, should these preliminary hypotheses be confirmed by experimental and epidemiological data, they could in the future lead not only to new treatments, but also to different medical and diagnostic approaches. Sars-CoV-2 belongs to the large family of beta-coronaviruses which, in addition to humans, has a wide range of animal hosts (birds, camels, bats, mice, dogs, cats, civets) and which, over the past twenty years, has given rise to other epidemics: the Sars epidemic at the beginning of the century and the Mers epidemic around ten years ago.

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The compelling hypothesis that close contact with animals — in this case cattle and dogs, which have shared human life and working activities for centuries — may be of help in combating certain viral diseases, can serve as a prelude to a new way of living, closer to the natural elements and more sustainable. Responsibility for the current pandemic must, in fact, be attributed to human action, which is invading realms (the typical example being the well-known Wuhan market) that should not be contaminated. And, ultimately, only a profound respect for the world around us will be able to save us from viruses and pandemics, restoring our contact with nature and its inhabitants.