During the pandemic, medical doctors and researchers noticed that children and adolescents infected with COVID-19 became less ill than adults.
A possible explanation for this is that children already had a prior level of immunity to COVID-19 provided by memory T cells generated by common colds.
After studying unique blood samples from children taken before the pandemic, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden have now identified memory T cells that react to cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
A possible explanation for this immunity in children is that they already had colds caused by one of the four coronaviruses causing seasonal common cold symptoms.
This new study reinforces this hypothesis and shows that T cells previously activated by the OC43 virus can cross-react against SARS-CoV-2.
The paper is the result of a collaborative study among researchers at Karolinska Institutet, the universities of Bern, Oslo and Linköping University.
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https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-03-common-cold-children-immunity-covid-.html
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