LONDON: Children infected with the seasonal common cold are likely to have immunity against Covid-19, a research revealed.
Doctors and researchers found that children and adolescents who contracted Covid during the epidemic fared better than adults.
Researchers from Sweden's Karolinska Institutet investigated distinctive blood samples taken from kids before the epidemic to comprehend this. They discovered memory T cells that respond to Covid-causing SARS-CoV-2 virus-infected cells.
The researchers hypothesised that one of the four coronaviruses that cause seasonal common cold symptoms could be to blame for the immunity seen in youngsters.
This current research supports this idea by demonstrating that T cells that had previously been stimulated by the OC43 virus are capable of cross-reacting with SARS-CoV-2.
According to corresponding author Annika Karlsson, head of the study group at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet, these reactions are particularly potent in the early years of life and become much less as we age.
Our research demonstrates how the T-cell response evolves and varies over time, and it has implications for vaccine research and development in the future. The research has been released in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal. According to the findings, the memory T-cell response to coronaviruses begins to form as early as two years old.
48 blood samples from toddlers aged two to six and 94 samples from adults aged 26 to 83 were included in the study.
Blood samples from 58 individuals who had recently recovered from Covid were also included in the analysis.
To better understand how the immune response to coronaviruses changes from childhood to adulthood, similar studies should be conducted in younger and older children, teenagers, and young adults, according to Marion Humbert, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Medicine Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet.
H3N2 outbreak: Schools in Puducherry shuts from 16-24 March