The T-Cell Immune Response To COVID-19 Lasts At Least Six Months (economist.com) 49
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Economist: Over the past year, many reports have shown rapidly waning levels of covid-specific antibodies after the initial burst caused by an infection. [...] Yet antibodies tell only part of the story. Another important actor is the T-cell. Rather than attacking viruses directly, T-cells attack infected cells, to stop the virus reproducing. The balance of importance of the antibody and T-cell arms of the immune system varies with the illness in question. And, as far as this particular infection is concerned, although almost all patients who catch SARS-CoV-2 are thought to create T-cells in response, an understanding of their significance has been elusive.
This is largely because T-cells are harder to measure than antibodies, and so are less often studied. Shamez Ladhani, a consultant epidemiologist with Public Health England, a government health-protection agency, who has worked on a new, long-term investigation of these cells, says it took nearly three weeks to count them in the 100 patients his study looked at. The effort was worthwhile, though, because it has shed new light on how long-lasting this form of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 might be.
Dr Ladhani's project is part of a wider effort focused on health-care workers that Public Health England began in March. Over 2,000 people have donated blood samples every month since then. The 100 he and his colleagues have studied are a subset of these. In a paper just published as a preprint, but not yet peer reviewed, they say that six months after infection all of these patients, even those who had had only mild symptoms, or none at all, still had detectable levels of T-cells directed against the virus. Though their antibodies might have vanished, T-cells remained on the scene. These findings bode well for the idea that T-cells offer long-term protection against reinfection.
This is largely because T-cells are harder to measure than antibodies, and so are less often studied. Shamez Ladhani, a consultant epidemiologist with Public Health England, a government health-protection agency, who has worked on a new, long-term investigation of these cells, says it took nearly three weeks to count them in the 100 patients his study looked at. The effort was worthwhile, though, because it has shed new light on how long-lasting this form of immunity to SARS-CoV-2 might be.
Dr Ladhani's project is part of a wider effort focused on health-care workers that Public Health England began in March. Over 2,000 people have donated blood samples every month since then. The 100 he and his colleagues have studied are a subset of these. In a paper just published as a preprint, but not yet peer reviewed, they say that six months after infection all of these patients, even those who had had only mild symptoms, or none at all, still had detectable levels of T-cells directed against the virus. Though their antibodies might have vanished, T-cells remained on the scene. These findings bode well for the idea that T-cells offer long-term protection against reinfection.
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Re: Watch out... (Score:1)
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Trump just wasn't going to do the science, but he'd buy in to it if you packaged it and put a price tag on it. That's all he understands. Which is why pharmaceutical companies were working on a vaccine (packaged product) and the government said they'd buy it (price tag). Anyone who thinks Biden was going to summon science and defeat this single-handledly is just a fool. Trump only appreciates science that aligns with his agenda, but science has been going on in the private sector unhindered by the Donal
Watching the watchers. (Score:2)
Hard to measure? Hmmm.
https://bitesizebio.com/22831/... [bitesizebio.com]
Chinese study about the Sars-Cov-2 (Score:5, Interesting)
A Chinese study prepublished on biorxiv explained that the SARS-CoV-2's ORF8 part of the genome was blocking the MHC-I molecules.
MHC-I are responsible to "flag" the cell as a target for the immune system... Several other viruses also block the expression of MHC-I, including HIV and Herpes (which explains why the immune system can't clean all the infected cells and why these stay "for life" in the body).
If that study proves to be true, T-Cell immunity could be "useless" and the marker which points the cells to be targetted may be prevented to reach the surface of the cell... The comments around that study was that it explained the several cases of healed patients who sudently went back to positive without having been reinfected.
DISCLAIMER: I'm not an epidemiologist, I'm just reporting what I saw in a medical article, written by people who knows better than me... The study was in "pre-publication" when I read it which means that it need to be confirmed by other scientists...
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By that logic, the polio virus is also just a version of the common cold, being in the same genus as the rhinoviruses.
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Re:Chinese study about the Sars-Cov-2 (Score:4, Informative)
Oh crap! You are right ...
Here is an overview of the paper [ox.ac.uk], and here is a link to the paper as a PDF [biorxiv.org].
I read about MHC before. It is a mechanism that makes sure foreign proteins are identified and attacked by killer cells. It also interferes with organ transplants.
Here is an overview of how MHC I works [wikipedia.org].
If this Coronavirus ends up being like HIV or Herpes, as far as immune system evasion goes, then humanity is in for a lot of pain, and for a long time ...
Re: Chinese study about the Sars-Cov-2 (Score:1)
Re: Chinese study about the Sars-Cov-2 (Score:3)
Do they? 70% of those receiving supplemental oxygen report long term health and breathing problems.
If you are a young fairly healthy adult you may not notice the decrease in stamina. If you are older and have some health issues you do.
I know of several people who were covid positive in may and June and while recovered still need oxygen help just to breathe. The reduced lung capacity is massive
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I gather an immunologist said this is not a surprise. If the virus did damage to cells then of course it's going to take a long time for your body to rebuild and heal.
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Yeah, just like when a cold sore goes away.
The patient 'recovers', meaning the clinical symptoms go away.
But the virus is still dormant and evades detection by the immune system, then flares up again and again for the entire lifetime of the host.
Being a mild virus, no cares much though ...
I hope this is not the case with this Coronavirus.
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HIV and Herpes are highly persistent because they write themselves into your DNA so they never really go away, or go dormant to avoid detection. That's not the case for SARS-CoV-2, although MHC-I blocking does make things nastier to deal with.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Disclaimer: I'm not a medical scientist either.
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Disclaimer: I'm not a medical scientist either.
No, but at least you figured out the key concepts in the sentence, that puts you ahead of 4 of 5 of the neckbeards commenting.
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DISCLAIMER: I'm not an epidemiologist, I'm just reporting what I saw in a medical article
LOL no, no, no. You're not "reporting" "what [you] saw" at all, you're spewing some shit that you're paraphrasing from your memory, which is nothing like whatever you read and didn't understand.
Those retroviruses have a lot of things different about them than this. You're a moron to even presume that whatever you read was relevant to this, and a bigger moron to believe you understood it in a way that lets you paraphrase it into common English without massacring it.
The only response (Score:3)
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Vaccines, if we even get one, work with the same things in our immune systems.
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B-Cells? (Score:2)
While I admit I've learned most of my immunology from "Cells at Work", isn't the real measure of adaptive immunity the development of memory B-cells? So while T-cell counts are cool and all, isn't that just a proxy for B-cells?
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Great. But... (Score:2)
Great. But it's been more than 12 months since the start of the pandemic.
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everyone died twice already.
Speak for yourself.
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everyone died twice already.
Speak for yourself.
Did your momma ever have any children?
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Great. But it's been more than 12 months since the start of the pandemic.
Your mistake is presuming that this article is relevant to the pandemic in an immediate, practical way and you're completely wrong about that.
What you would want to have seen before deciding that, if you were a lot smarter than you are, is a comparison to other viruses. T cell levels often can only be detected for a certain amount of time, even in cases where most people have lifetime immunity or near-immunity following an infection. Sometimes you can come up with a test using inactivated virus that will
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The pandemic started earlier than Nov 6, 2019? Almost, or not quite, or citation needed.
You didn't dig much. Sorry, busy, don't have time to dig for you. Google: first case in us
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I'm not going to do your google for you or wipe your ass either. Good luck.
That would be sweet (Score:4, Interesting)
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You want to know me better (Score:1)
Detectable levels (Score:2)
...does not mean immunity.