First Nations people appear to have similar COVID-19 immune response to non-Indigenous Australians

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2023-09-20 03:00

Australia; VIC; QLD; NT

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Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people appear to have an immune response to COVID-19 that is comparable to non-Indigenous Australians despite their higher mortality rate, according to Australian researchers. First Nations people have a COVID-19 mortality rate 1.6 times higher than the general population, so researchers investigated whether there were immunological differences contributing to this. Testing the blood of First Nations people hospitalised in Darwin when they had recently developed COVID-19 and again at discharge, they say their blood responded comparably with non-Indigenous people, suggesting other factors are causing the higher mortality rate.

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Journal/
conference: Immunology & Cell Biology

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: The Peter Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity, The University of Melbourne, Menzies School of Health Research, Monash University, CQUniversity

Funder: This work was supported by the NHMRC Leadership Investigator Grant to KK (#1173871), Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (#T11-712/19-N) to KK, the MRFF Award (#2005544) to KK, SJK and JD, MRFF Award (#2016062) to KK, THON, LCR, AKW, SJK, JD and JR, NHMRC Emerging Leadership Level 1 Investigator Grant to THON (#1194036) and AKW (#1173433) and 2021 Doherty Agility Fund to THON, KK, AW and WZ. WZ is supported by the Melbourne Research Scholarship from The University of Melbourne. EBC is supported by an NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellowship (#1091516). This project has been funded in whole or in part with Federal funds from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Department of Health and Human Services, under Contract No. 75N93021C00018 (NIAID Centers of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response, CEIRR).

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