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In most people, SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies gradually decreased over the course of three to four months.
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Representative image. Mufid Majnun / Unsplash
The first case of COVID-19 was reported in December last year. Since then, the disease has infected more than 47 million people, of which over 34 million have successfully recovered. Even after all these cases, scientists cannot say for sure how long the cured patients will remain immune to the disease.
This is partly due to the fact that the disease is very new and there is still a lot to learn. There have also been cases of reinfection, most likely from a different strain of the virus, but it is still possible.
Evidence of previous coronaviruses has shown that antibodies against this class of viruses last no longer than six months and decline rapidly after the disease disappears. A larger repertoire of antibodies is found in patients with severe COVID-19 than in patients with mild illness.
However, a group of researchers from Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the United States said they found a subset of coronavirus patients who develop a strong and sustained antibody response even after suffering from mild to moderate illness.
The results of the study will be published in the journal cell.
I study
For the study, Dr. Duane Wesemann, an immunologist in Brigham’s Department of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and his team participated in 92 Boston-area people who had COVID-19 mild to moderate between March and June 2020. Patients other than five were monitored at home.
Each month, blood samples were taken from all patients and the antibodies in each sample were measured, especially the IgG antibody – which is seen later in infection but persists in the body for a long time.
Based on the different levels of antibodies, the researchers split the teams into two: those who kept the virus-specific antibodies for a long time (the maintainers) and those who didn’t.
In most people, SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies gradually decreased over the course of three to four months. In 20% of people, however, antibody production remained strong and increased over the same period.
Those who had antibodies showed symptoms for a much shorter duration – 10 days than the normal 16 days. They also had a difference in the memory of T and B lymphocytes. Memory cells are the cells of the immune system that ensure that your body recognizes and activates a rapid antibody response if a pathogen attacks your body for the second time.
In a press release from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Wesemann said, “It is important for COVID-19 to find out how these individuals can support long-term antibody production and will also have important implications for our understanding of the immune system in general.”
Limitations of the study
In the press release, the study authors noted that the study had a major limitation in that most of the volunteers were white women.
Therefore, more diverse studies are needed to confirm the findings of this study and determine if anything similar happens in asymptomatic and severe COVID-19 patients.
For more information, see our article on immunity to COVID-19.
Health articles on Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, India’s first and largest source of verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists collaborate with doctors to inform you about all aspects of health.
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