Duration of antibody retention
After the body's defense system against disease (immune system) has fought off a virus, the immune system remembers the virus. One study found that people's immune systems remember COVID-19 for several months after recovery.
The immune system has
The immune system produces many different types of cells and molecules to fight disease. These include antibodies, T cells, and B cells.
The researchers looked at the immune responses of about 200 people who had recovered from COVID-19 infection. This includes people who were infected eight months before the analysis. Of those who were included, 95% were found to have a memory of the immune system of the virus that causes COVID-19 and SARS-CoV-2.
Most of them had antibodies that blocked the virus' spike protein. The virus uses this protein to invade cells, and the number and type of antibodies varied from person to person. Antibody levels remained stable over time, but decreased slightly 6 to 8 months after infection.
Immune cell levels also remained high, and memory B cells, which produce antibodies, were found to increase for several months after infection and then remain stable. It turns out that most people have one important T cell, and about half of them have another type of T cell that kills the infected cells.
A few months ago, our study showed that natural infections triggered a strong response, and this study now shows that the response continues," said Dr. Ronald L. Lahora of the Lahora Immunology Laboratory.
Immunological memory to SARS-CoV-2 assessed for up to 8 months after infection. Dan JM, Mateus J, Kato Y, Hastie KM, Yu ED, Faliti CE, Grifoni A, Ramirez SI, Haupt S, Frazier A, Nakao C, Rayaprolu V, Rawlings SA, Peters B, Krammer F, Simon V, Saphire EO, Smith DM, Weiskopf D, Sette A, Crotty S. Science. 2021 Feb 5; 371(6529):eabf4063. doi: 10.1126/science.abf4063. Epub 2021 Jan 6. PMID: 33408181.
Summary
The results of this study on the percentage of people who produced antibodies after infection and the duration of their antibodies were as described above.
Since this is still a short-term study, we do not know how much the figures will change in the future, but it seems that the antibody retention period will not change much since other types of viral vaccines are given in a similar period of time.
Some people may feel uneasy about a disease that is not well understood, but if we increase our knowledge by referring to such studies, we will be able to come up with countermeasures.
