The President’s Doctor, Doctor Sean Conley, along with members of the President’s medical team, commented on reporters at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. President Trump had COVID-19 but recovered quickly. Image Credit: Official White House Photo by Tia Dufour
Brigham researchers identified patients who cleared the disease more quickly and had a sustained antibody response, with important implications for immunity.
One of the pressing questions too COVID-19 remains: how long does immunity last? A key indicator of immunity is the presence of virus-specific antibodies. Previous studies have provided conflicting reports as to whether or not people who have recovered from infection can receive potentially protective antibodies. A new study conducted by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital looked at blood samples and cells from patients who had recovered from mild to moderate COVID-19 and found that antibodies to the virus increased in most people after Resolution of the disease decreased, however a subgroup of patients raised anti-virus antibody production several months after infection. These antibody maintainers had a shorter course of symptoms, suggesting that some people who recover more quickly from COVID-19 may develop a more effective and lasting immune response to the virus. Results will be published in cell.
“We found a subset of people who heal rapidly after COVID-19 while maintaining virus-specific antibody levels,” said Dr. med. Duane Wesemann, Immunologist and Associate Physician in the Brigham Department of Allergy and Clinical Immunology and Associate Professor at Harvard Medical School. “The type of immune response we see in these people is a bit like investing in an insurance policy – it’s the immune system’s way of adding a potential layer of protection against future encounters with the virus.”
The Wesemann laboratory studies the entire set of antibodies that a host’s immune system produces and how they learn to recognize pathogens. In spring 2020, the team turned to the COVID-19 pandemic and the immune response of infected people. They strive to understand the nature of the antibody response to the virus. To that end, the team recruited and enrolled 92 people in the Boston area who had recovered from COVID-19 between March and June 2020. Five of the people were hospitalized, but all the others recovered at home. The team collected and analyzed blood samples monthly and measured a number of antibodies, including immunoglobulin-G (IgG), to the virus that causes COVID-19. They divided the cohort into two groups – those who maintain virus-specific IgG levels for several weeks and those who lose them. The team analyzed these groups and possible links with clinical and other immunological data.
The team found that IgG levels against the virus tended to decrease significantly in most people over the course of three to four months. In around 20 percent of the individuals, however, antibody production remained stable or increased over the same period. The team found that these “maintainers” had symptoms for a significantly shorter period than “decomposers” (average of 10 days versus 16 days). The maintainers also had differences in T cell populations and B cells of memory, two types of immune cells that can play key roles in immune memory and protection.
“The data suggest a type of immune response that is not only able to deal with viral diseases by leading to rapid resolution of symptoms, but also better producing cells that are suitable for longer-term production of antiviral IgG Antibodies can use, “said Wesemann. “It is relevant to COVID-19 how these people can support longer-term antibody production and will also have important implications for our understanding of the immune system in general.”
Reference: “Fast COVID-19 healers support anti-SARS-CoV-2 Antibody Production “by Yuezhou Chen, Adam Zuiani, Stephanie Fischinger, Jyotsna Mullur, Caroline Atyeo, Meghan Travers, Felipe JN Lelis, Krista M. Pullen, Hannah Martin, Pei Tong, Avneesh Gautam, Shaghayegh Habibi, Jillian Bensko, Deborah Gakpo, Jared Feldman , Blake M. Hauser, Timotheus M. Caradonna, Yongfei Cai, John S. Burke, Junrui Lin, James A. Lederer, Evan Christopher Lam, Christy L. Lavine, Michael S. Seemann, Bing Chen, Aaron G. Schmidt, Alejandro Benjamin Balazs, Douglas A. Lauffenburger, Galit Alter and Duane R. Wesemann, accepted on October 29, 2020, cell.
DOI: 10.1016 / j.cell.2020.10.051
This study was supported by the National Institutes of Health (T32 AI007245, T32 GM007753, AI146779, AI007306, AI007512, T32 AI007306, AI142790, DP2DA040254, NIDA Avenir Award, and R01 AI121394, AI139538, AI137940), MGH Transformative Scholarship Students Program Foundation (Grant # 1745302), Massachusetts Consortium on Pathogenesis Readiness (MassCPR), Fast Grant funding for COVID-19 science, Burroughs Wellcome Fund, Ragon Institute, and Mark and Lisa Schwartz and the Schwartz Family Foundation.
