New Data on T Cells and the Coronavirus | In the Pipeline
▻https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/07/15/new-data-on-t-cells-and-the-coronavirus
A propos de :
SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity in cases of #COVID-19 and SARS, and uninfected controls | Nature
►https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z
Now comes a new paper in press at Nature. It confirms that convalescent patients from the current epidemic show T-cell responses (mostly CD4+ but some CD8+ as well) to various epitopes of the N (nucleocapsid) protein, which the earlier paper had identified as one of the main antigens as well (along with the Spike and M proteins, among others, with differences between the CD4+ and CD8+ responses as well).
Turning to patients who had caught #SARS back in #2003 and recovered, it is already known (and worried about) that their antibody responses faded within two or three years. But this paper shows that these patients still have (17 years later!) a robust T-cell response to the original SARS coronavirus’s N protein, which extends an earlier report of such responses going out to 11 years. This new work finds that these cross-react with the new #SARS_CoV-2 N protein as well. This makes one think, as many have been wondering, that T-cell driven immunity is perhaps the way to reconcile the apparent paradox between (1) antibody responses that seem to be dropping week by week in convalescent patients but (2) few (if any) reliable reports of actual re-infection. That would be good news indeed.
Et comme dans une étude précédente, il semble exister une #immunité croisée même chez les personnes qui n’ont jamais été en contact avec le sars-2003 ou le coronavirus du #MERS ; de plus une partie de cette dernière semble être due à un contact avec des coronavirus animaux.