On the intrinsic nature of viral pathogenesis: The assumption of a Darwinian paradigm to describe COVID-19 pandemic

Pier Francesco Roggero; Arianna Calistri; Giorgio Palù

doi:10.1016/j.csbj.2022.10.037

On the intrinsic nature of viral pathogenesis: The assumption of a Darwinian paradigm to describe COVID-19 pandemic

Comput Struct Biotechnol J. 2022:20:5870-5872. doi: 10.1016/j.csbj.2022.10.037. Epub 2022 Oct 28.

Authors

Pier Francesco Roggero¹, Arianna Calistri¹, Giorgio Palù^{1

2}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Molecular Medicine, University of Padua, via A. Gabelli 63, 35121 Padua, Italy.
² Italian Medicines Agency, Via del Tritone 181, 00187 Rome, Italy.

Abstract

Our hypothesis about evolution of the COVID-19 pandemic foresees an inverse relation between infectivity (R0) and lethality (L) of SARS-CoV-2. The above parameters are driven by a continuing mutation process granting the virus a clear survival advantage over virulence. For interpreting this relation we adopted a simple equation, R0 × L $\approx$ k, by which R0 and L depend upon a constant k, that corresponds to an intrinsic property of the viral species involved. The hypothesis was verified by following changes of the R0 and L terms of the formula in the different variants of SARS-CoV-2 that progressively appeared. A further validation came when the equation was applied to pandemic and epidemic influenza type A viruses, Ebola virus and measles virus. We believe this equation that considers virus biology in Darwinian terms could be extremely useful to better face infectious viral threats and validate virus-host molecular interactions relevant to viral pathogenesis.

Keywords: COVID-19; Darwinian paradigm; Infectivity; Lethality; Virus evolution.