Nature's Covid Publications Summary: Covid Antibodies Fade Within Weeks of Recovery.

[NNadir]

Nature News is now running a very nice summary of recent Covid research. The caveat to what is contained in it is that most of the research referenced has not been peer reviewed.

This week's summary is here: Coronavirus research updates: Antiviral antibodies peter out within weeks after infection (Nature News 7/16/20.

Subtitle: Nature wades through the literature on the new coronavirus — and summarizes key papers as they appear.

It is open sourced.

Some excerpts:

16 July — Antiviral antibodies peter out within weeks after infection

Key antibodies that neutralize the effects of the new coronavirus fall to low levels within months of SARS-CoV-2 infection, according to the most comprehensive study yet.

Neutralizing antibodies can block a pathogen from infecting cells. But such antibody responses against coronaviruses often wane after just a few weeks.

Katie Doores at King’s College London and her colleagues monitored the concentration of neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 in 65 infected people for up to 94 days (J. Seow et al. Preprint at medRxiv http://doi.org/d3s2; 2020). In a preprint that has not yet been peer reviewed, the team reports that at the peak of antibody production, people with severe COVID-19 symptoms had higher levels of antibodies than had people with mild disease...

...in most people, antibody levels began to fall about a month after symptoms appeared, sometimes to nearly undetectable levels — raising questions about the durability of vaccines designed to promote the production of neutralizing antibodies...

...15 July — Positive trial results raise hopes for a top vaccine candidate

A leading COVID-19 vaccine candidate generates an immune response against the virus and causes few side effects, according to preliminary data from a phase I safety study with 45 participants...

...The vaccine is being co-developed by Moderna in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. It consists of RNA instructions that prompt human cells to make the virus’s spike protein, generating an immune response.


Lisa Jackson at Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute in Seattle and her colleagues gave participants two injections, administered four weeks apart, of one of three different doses of the vaccine (L. A. Jackson et al. N. Engl. J. Med. http://doi.org/d3tt; 2020). Most side effects were mild, although three participants who got the highest dose experienced worse complications, such as a high fever...

...5 July — Severe COVID-19 has a telltale immune profile

Scientists have identified an immune-system signature in people with serious COVID-19 — a finding that could inform the development of treatments for the disease.


Benjamin Terrier at the University of Paris and his colleagues analysed blood samples from 50 people infected with SARS-CoV-2 (J. Hadjadj et al. Science http://doi.org/gg4vjx; 2020). Compared to the individuals with mild or moderate symptoms, those with severe disease produced fewer antiviral proteins called interferons and more inflammatory molecules. The researchers also found that blood levels of a specific interferon decreased just before participants had to be taken to intensive-care units...

...and so on...

As one of the world's premier scientific journals, the information probably (but not definitely) has more credibility than what one might read, for example, in the New York Times.

[dweller]

1. a ? from a perspective that i don't know if this is a dumb ?

but once antibodies are developed, even if they fade, doesn't the body's immune
system have the ability to develop them again quickly?
i mean, you get measles, mumps, rubella etc vaccines as infants, and boosters aren't required, no? because those don't mutate, correct?
we get flu shots yearly because there is never a clear knowledge of what influenza virus is oncoming, but at some point, having immunization against
one strain, does the immune system have some 'memory' of how to fight it?

i guess my question is, having developed antibodies once successfully, aren't the odds of developing again quickly higher, unless the virus has mutated to a version that is deadlier?

just thinking you might give your input, and enlighten me... be gentle

✌🏼

[NNadir]

2. It depends on the lifetime of memory B cells and the specificity of the antigen.

If I understand the Moderna "vaccine" correctly, given the somewhat deliberately arcane technologies Moderna is said to possess, the vaccine inserts "memory" into cells.

It is not so much that antibodies exist as it is that B cells have the ability to proliferate upon re-exposure to the antigen.

Some memory cells do not last all that long. This is why some vaccines, tetanus for example, require periodic "booster" shots.

I am, however, not an expert in immunology, and my exposure to it is purely peripheral, but nevertheless, this is my general perception.

I did not read the paper to which the "Nature News" article refers. The problem with Covid papers is that they are coming so fast and furious that there hasn't been the resources to review them well. I was certainly burned by the paper, published in a major well respected journal, relevant to my own health, on the advisability of continuing blood pressure medications during Covid infections. The paper was retracted for poor data sources. This does not mean that the opposite of what the paper claimed is true, that BP medicines should be discontinued during active Covid disease, only that the true effects remain unknown.

We believe that rushed science will always succeed, you know, the Manhattan project/Apollo project example. However both of those projects were centrally administered, and the Covid research is more like the wild, wild, wild West.

We have to keep in mind that the asshole in the White House is more fond of game show host's opinions on this disease than he is on the opinion of scientists. The result is tragedy.

[dweller]

3. thank you, that didn't fly entirely over my head

and provided a fairly good answer to my main ?

✌🏼