(CNN) – The immune formula of some other people who have not been exposed to the new coronavirus may be familiar with the pathogen, which would in all likelihood help decrease the severity of the disease if that user contracts Covid-19, a new virus. examine suggests.
The study, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found that of a pattern of 68 healthy adults in Germany who had been exposed to coronavirus, 35% had T cells in their blood that were reactive to the virus.
T cells are a component of the immune formula and help the framework of infection. The reactivity of T cells suggests that the immune formula may have already reveled in fighting a similar infection and would possibly use this reminiscence to help fight a new infection.
So how is it possible that your immune formula has reactive T cells if you had never had Covid-19? They were “probably acquired in past infections with endemic coronavirus,” researchers wrote, from establishments in Germany and the United Kingdom, in the new study. The use of this T-cell reminiscence of some other similar infection to respond to a new infection is called “cross-reactivity”.
The new study analyzed blood samples from 18 patients with Covid-19, elderly people aged 21 to 81 and healthy donors, aged 20 to 64, in Germany. The study found that coronavirus reactive T cells were detected in 83% of patients with Covid-19.
Although researchers also discovered pre-existing cross-reactivity T cells in healthy donors, they wrote in the study that the effect these cells can have on the final results of Covid-19 disease is still unknown.
In this study, it appears that there is a significant proportion of Americans who have this cross-reaction T-mobile immunity against other coronavirus infections that could possibly have an effect on how they deal with the new coronavirus. I think the big question is to check to move on from the fact that they have those mobile Ts to perceive what the role of those mobile Ts might be,” Adalja said.
“We know, for example, that young people and young adults are relatively unaffected by the serious consequences of this disease, and I think a speculation might be that the pre-existing T cells that exist would possibly be much more or more active at a higher level. older cohorts than in older cohorts, ” said Adalja.
‘What if you could also compare others who might have a serious and mild illness and take a look at those other people’s T cells and say, ‘Are there other people with a serious illness who are less likely to have cross-reactivity? T cells than other people with mild illness? more T cells with cross-reactivity? “I think there’s a biological plausibility for this hypothesis,” he said. “However, it is clear that the presence of T cells does not prevent other people from being infected, but does it modulate the severity of the infection? That turns out to be the case.”
So far, the coronavirus pandemic, the concentrate has been on Covid-19 antibodies and the role they play in strengthening immunity to the disease.
But infectious disease expert Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, who is not concerned in the new study, said T cells cannot be overlooked.
”Here’s an examination that suggests that there might possibly be some cross-reactivity, some pump priming, if you will, with general traditional coronaviruses that cause colds in humans and possibly there would be some cross-reactivity with the Covid virus that causes so much damage. . It’s intriguing in itself because, from the point of view of antibodies, we think there weren’t many crosses,” Schaffner said.
“It’s not entirely surprising, because they’re all members of the same family. It’s like they’re cousins from the same family,” he says. “Now we want to see if this has an effect on clinical practice. Array … does this make it more or less likely that the inflamed user with Covid actually expands a disease? And does this have implications for vaccine expansion?
Adalja added that he was not surprised to see this cross-reactivity of T cells by examining participants who had not been exposed to the new coronavirus, called SARS-CoV-2.
“SARS-CoV-2 is the seventh human coronavirus to be discovered, and 4 of human coronaviruses are what we call community-acquired coronaviruses, and in combination those 4 are to blame for 25% of our colds,” Adalja said. “Almost every single user in the world has had some encounter with a coronavirus, and since they are all components of the same family, cross-reaction immunity develops.”
Nature’s new study is not the only article that recommends a pre-existing immunity safe in others who oppose the new coronavirus.
Alessandro Sette and Shane Crotty, both from the University of California, San Diego, wrote in an article published in the journal Nature before this month, that “20-50% of unexposed donors exhibit significant reactivity to antigenic groups SARS-CoV-2 peptide”, in separate studies, however, noted that the source and clinical relevance of reactivity remain unknown.
Sette and Crotty wrote that “it has now been established that the pre-existing immune reactivity of SARS-CoV-2 exists to some extent in the general population. It has been hypothesized, but proven, that this may simply be due to immunity opposed to “common bloodless coronavirus”.