British coronavirus variant may have come from dogs, researchers say
- Shanghai-based researchers say early forms of the B117 variant have been found in samples taken from dogs
- The mutation was first identified in southern England but has spread rapidly in several countries
A coronavirus variant that was first discovered in Britain may have come from dogs, according to a study from Chinese scientists.
The Shanghai-based researchers tracing the early evolution of variant B117, which has caused a new wave of cases in several countries, failed to find its footprint in viral samples collected from humans worldwide.
But when they expanded the search to include animals, they discovered some early forms of B117 on dogs, including one sample taken in the United States last July.
“Such progenitor variants comprised most or all of the mutations of the early variant B117 within the Canidae family populations, and they may have spilled back to humans after a rapid mutation period,” wrote professor Chen Luonan and colleagues at the State Key Laboratory of Cell Biology in a non-peer-reviewed paper posted on biorxiv.org last Friday.
The emergence of the B117 variant has puzzled researchers. After being isolated from two patients in Kent in southeast England and London last September, it quickly became the dominant strain in the United Kingdom and many other countries, spreading more quickly than previous strains.
Some experts believe the variant might have emerged from local communities under the selective pressure of antiviral drugs used during the pandemic. According to one prevailing theory, it appeared suddenly in the UK and subsequently spread to other parts of the world.