(LIVE SCIENCE) – Scientists deliberately infected young, healthy volunteers with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 — and now, they’ve shared their first results from that experiment.
The new study, published Tuesday (Feb. 1) in Springer Nature’s preprint database, In Review, has not yet been peer reviewed, but it could provide insight into how mild COVID-19 unfolds, from the moment of exposure to the point that the virus is eliminated from the body.
For the study, the researchers recruited 34 healthy volunteers ages 18 to 30; none of the participants had ever been infected with SARS-CoV-2 or received a COVID-19 vaccine, according to a statement. All participants tested negative for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 at the start of the study, the researchers noted in their report.
