Cross-Reactive Immunity To COVID?
Two papers have been published citing research that indicates some encouraging news regarding possible adaptive immunity from previous exposure to other corona virus’. Scientists are saying:
“A key issue to consider in the study of SARS-CoV-2 immunity is whether some degree of cross-reactive coronavirus immunity exists in a fraction of the human population, and whether this might influence susceptibility to COVID-19 disease.”
They looked at blood samples collected between 2015 and 2018. They detected CD4+ T cell responses in about half of the samples. They suspect that exposure to other, common cold-causing coronaviruses may be the cause.
The Research
The Charité University Hospital in Berlin reported that they found CD4+ T cells that recognized the spike protein in blood from 83 percent of COVID-19 patients and 34 percent of healthy people tested. The second paper was published using recent data from the outbreak in California.
There is still so much we have to learn. “There is also great uncertainty about whether adaptive immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 are protective or pathogenic, or whether both scenarios can occur depending on timing, composition, or magnitude of the adaptive immune response.”
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