Infectious Disease Specialist Questions Infectious Disease Specialist

Virus virulence?

Do mutated viruses increase or decrease virulence?


2 Answers

Increase
Mutations may be neutral, negative, or positive for the virus. The mutation may have effect on the virus. The mutation that have negative effects generally simply disappear. Those with positive effects “help” the virus. This positive mutation may enhance the virus’ ability to reproduce and maybe to cause more disease in the infected person. That may or may not be helpful to the virus which basically wants to reproduce and spread. So, there is no way to know. Ideally, the virus would do best by infecting without causing much disease, but spreading easily - as it does among children.

G. Dickinson
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