In a paper published by Science, researchers found that some antibodies produced after infection from common cold coronaviruses could also help against SARS-CoV-2 in children. This effect was most notably pronounced in children between the ages of 6 to 16. These common cold coronaviruses have many structural similarities with SARS-CoV-2. In developing antibody tests for COVID-19, they wanted to examine blood of patients with COVID-19 to those without the disease. Those without the disease had increased antibodies that reacted with common cold coronaviruses.
In adults, only 1 in 20 of these antibodies were cross-reactive; whereas, in children this number was 1 in 6. The researchers don’t yet understand why this is the case. However, children may interact with more classmates and be exposed to different coronaviruses.
They also attempted to find the mechanism of this cross reactivity. They found that the coronavirus antibodies from the common cold typically target the S2 subunit of the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. The S2 subunit seems similar in both the common cold and SARS-CoV-2. This is exciting work, as we could potentially engineer antibodies with this subunit for future therapeutics in children.
However, several questions still remain unanswered. Namely, how does immunogenic activity of SARS-CoV-2 defenses decline with age? We see that elderly people are most susceptible to SARS-CoV-2, but why do children seem to have the best immune response even though their immune system/immune memory might not be as developed?
-Fan
Sources:
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/early/2020/11/05/science.abe1107
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