Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2021 Mar 23:12:637152.
doi: 10.3389/fimmu.2021.637152. eCollection 2021.

Bovine Coronavirus Immune Milk Against COVID-19

Antonio Arenas  1 , Carmen Borge  1 , Alfonso Carbonero  1 , Ignacio Garcia-Bocanegra  1 , David Cano-Terriza  1 , Javier Caballero  1 , Antonio Arenas-Montes  1
Affiliations
Review

Bovine Coronavirus Immune Milk Against COVID-19

Antonio Arenas et al. Front Immunol. .

Abstract

After a year of evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic, there is still no specific effective treatment for the disease. Although the majority of infected people experience mild disease, some patients develop a serious disease, especially when other pathologies concur. For this reason, it would be very convenient to find pharmacological and immunological mechanisms that help control SARS-CoV-2 infection. Since the COVID-19 and BCoV viruses are very close phylogenetically, different studies demonstrate the existence of cross-immunity as they retain shared epitopes in their structure. As a possible control measure against COVID-19, we propose the use of cow's milk immune to BCoV. Thus, the antigenic recognition of some highly conserved structures of viral proteins, particularly M and S2, by anti-BCoV antibodies present in milk would cause a total or partial inactivation of SARS-COV-2 (acting as a particular vaccine) and be addressed more easily by GALT's highly specialized antigen-presenting cells, thus helping the specific immune response.

Keywords: BCoV; COVID-19; SARS-CoV-2; control; immune milk.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

References

    1. Brian DA, Baric RS. Coronavirus genome structure and replication. Curr Top Microbiol Immunol (2005) 287:1–30. 10.1007/3-540-26765-4_1 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. de Groot RJ, Baker S, Barik RS, Holmes KV. Family Coronaviridae. In: Ed: King AMQ, Adams MJ, Cartens EB, Lefkowitz EJ. editors. Virus Taxonomy. Ninth Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses. Elsevier; (2012). p. 806–28. 10.1016/B978-0-12-384684-6.00068-9 - DOI
    1. Vijgen L, Keyaerts E, Moës E, Thoelen I, Wollants E, Lemey P, et al. . Complete Genomic Sequence of Human Coronavirus OC43: Molecular Clock Analysis Suggests a Relatively Recent Zoonotic Coronavirus Transmission Event. J Virol (2005) 79(3):1595–604. 10.1128/JVI.79.3.1595-1604.2005 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Kin N, Miszczak F, Diancourt L, Caro V, Moutou F, Vabret A, et al. . Comparative molecular epidemiology of two closely related coronaviruses, bovine coronavirus (BCoV) and human coronavirus OC43 (HCoV-OC43), reveals a different evolutionary pattern. Infect Genet Evol (2016) 40:186–91. 10.1016/j.meegid.2016.03.006 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Lu R, Zhao X, Li J, Niu P, Yang B, Wu H, et al. . Genomic characterisation and epidemiology of 2019 novel coronavirus: implications for virus origins and receptor bindings. Lancet (2020) 395(10224):565–74. 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30251-8 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Substances