{"id":116901,"date":"2021-08-08T17:59:29","date_gmt":"2021-08-09T00:59:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=116901"},"modified":"2021-08-08T17:59:29","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T00:59:29","slug":"covid-19-survivors-have-broad-longer-term-immunity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2021\/08\/08\/covid-19-survivors-have-broad-longer-term-immunity\/","title":{"rendered":"COVID-19 Survivors Have Broad, Longer-Term Immunity"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0RAJEE SURI<\/a> Courtesy The Epoch Times<\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n

People who have\nrecovered from COVID-19 retain broad and effective longer-term immunity<\/a> to the disease, according to a\nnew study.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Findings of the study,\nwhich is the most comprehensive of its kind so far, have implications for\nexpanding understanding about human immune memory as well as future vaccine\ndevelopment for coronaviruses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the longitudinal study\nin Cell Reports Medicine<\/a>,\nresearchers looked at 254 patients with mostly mild to moderate symptoms of\nSARS-CoV-2 infection over a period of more than eight months (250 days) and\nfound that their immune\nresponse<\/a> to the\nvirus remained durable and strong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The findings are\nreassuring, especially given early reports during the pandemic that protective\nneutralizing antibodies didn\u2019t last in COVID-19 patients, said Rafi Ahmed,\ndirector of the Emory University Vaccine Center and a lead author of the paper.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The study serves as a\nframework to define and predict long-lived immunity to SARS-CoV-2 after natural\ninfection. We also saw indications in this phase that natural immunity could\ncontinue to persist,\u201d Ahmed said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The research team will\ncontinue to evaluate this cohort over the next few years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers found that\nnot only did the immune response increase with disease\nseverity<\/a> but also with each decade of age regardless of disease\nseverity, suggesting that there are additional unknown factors influencing\nage-related differences in COVID-19 responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In following the patients\nfor months, researchers got a more nuanced view of how the immune system\nresponds to COVID-19 infection. The picture that emerges indicates that the\nbody\u2019s defense shield not only produces an array of neutralizing antibodies but\nactivates certain T and B cells to establish immune memory, offering more\nsustained defenses against reinfection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We saw that antibody\nresponses, especially IgG antibodies, were not only durable in the vast\nmajority of patients but decayed at a slower rate than previously estimated,\nwhich suggests that patients are generating longer-lived plasma cells that can\nneutralize the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ahmed said investigators\nwere surprised to see that convalescent participants also displayed increased\nimmunity against common human coronaviruses<\/a> as well as SARS-CoV-1, a close\nrelative of the current coronavirus. The study suggests that patients who\nsurvived COVID-19 are likely to also possess protective immunity even against\nsome SARS-CoV-2 variants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vaccines that target other\nparts of the virus rather than just the spike protein may be more helpful in\ncontaining infection as SARS-CoV-2 variants overtake the prevailing strains,\u201d\nAhmed said. This could pave the way for us to design vaccines that address\nmultiple coronaviruses.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The researchers said the\nstudy more comprehensively identifies the adaptive immune components leading to\nrecovery, and that it will serve as a benchmark for immune memory induced by SARS-CoV-2<\/a> vaccines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We can build on these\nresults to define the progression to long-lived immunity against the new\ncoronavirus, which can guide rational responses when future outbreaks occur,\u201d\nAhmed said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The National Institutes of\nHealth funded the work, which is a collaboration between Emory University and\nthe Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY\u00a0RAJEE SURI Courtesy The Epoch Times People who have recovered from COVID-19 retain broad and effective longer-term immunity to the disease, according to a new study. Findings of the study, which is the most comprehensive of its kind so far, have implications for expanding understanding about human immune memory as well as future vaccine development for coronaviruses. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-116901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=116901"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/116901\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=116901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=116901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=116901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}