NICHOLAS ELIAS CONTRIBUTORJuly 13, 2020 12:19 PM ET
A study released Saturday by King’s College London shows that people may lose their immunity to COVID-19 within months and could be susceptible to reinfection on a yearly basis.
Scientists at King’s College London analyzed the amount of antibodies in 90 patients and healthcare workers at Guy and St. Thomas’ NHS trust, per the study. The analysis found that antibody production peaked three weeks after symptoms began and then declined rapidly. (RELATED: Phoenix-Area Hospitals Run Out Of Morgue Beds As Coronavirus Deaths Surge)
The study found that 60% of patients developed a “potent” response with antibodies at the peak of their infection with the virus, but only 17% retained the potency three months later. Antibody levels dropped so sharply in some patients that they became undetectable.
“People are producing a reasonable antibody response to the virus, but it’s waning over a short period of time and depending on how high your peak is, that determines how long the antibodies are staying around,” Dr. Katie Doores, lead author on the study, told The Guardian.
Doores also told The Guardian that a vaccine for the virus might also potentially fall short after a few months. “People may need boosting and one shot might not be sufficient,” Doores explained.
A vaccine created by the University of Oxford shielded test animals from serious infection, but they were still infected enough to be able to pass the virus to other hosts, per The Guardian.
The study by King’s College London also found that those with severe infections produced the most antibodies. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) names seven different types of coronavirus currently spreading across the globe, most of which create the common cold. Two other strains create MERS and SARS, while the newest strain creates the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19.
“One thing we know about these coronaviruses is that people can get reinfected fairly often,” Prof. Stuart Neil, a co-author on the study, told The Guardian. “What that must mean is that the protective immunity people generate doesn’t last very long. It looks like Sars-Cov-2, the virus that causes Covid-19, might be falling into that pattern as well.”
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This whole thing has become immersed in so much politics and vested interests that I don’t care about it.
There are the Fear Mongers and the Wuhoo Fluers.
The former create fear about lethality, duration, immunity and inexpensive treatments to get at Trump or argue for Vaccines or more expensive treatments
The latter say “Ho hum” the disease is like a bad Flu and the cure is worse than the disease.
I had my comments about T-cells censored in the Australian newspaper The Advertiser.
“May lose”
But no proved cases of reinfection.
The UK government cabinet advisors like to keep people worried about second infections:
https://www.bi.team/blogs/dont-say-it-makes-you-immune-how-you-frame-coronavirus-anitbody-results-matters/
If one of the many SARS CoV-2 strains doesn’t repeatedly get you maybe one of the common corona-viruses might make you ill enough to call your doctor or throw you into a panic. You might test positive for COVID 19 but what if it is something else that is actually making you sick, like a rhinovirus or a common corona virus or some other nasty respiratory virus….many of which are unknown. And what about infections from multiple co-occurring or piggybacking corona-viruses and rhinovirus? And what about high blood sugar, hypertension, genetics from neanderthal man, or the wrong blood type? What about immuno-suppressant drugs and monoclonal antibodies and ACE II inhibitors and obesity? What about COPD? There are 200,000 million cases of viral pneumonia a year around the world. We won’t be free of this fear mongering until November.
Coronavirus: Why everyone was wrong
The immune response to the virus is stronger than everyone thought https://medium.com/@vernunftundrichtigkeit/coronavirus-why-everyone-was-wrong-fce6db5ba809
What we need is some bacteriophage that loves nothing more than to munch on Covid19.
Let the banners fly and the bells ring. Early late fall possible ‘cure’ for covid.
Those in the know say this, new artificial antibody technology for covid, is the highest probability real covid game changer.
Based on the success of the artificially produced antibodies treatment for the deadly Ebola which was 90% effective, with room for additional optimizing.
The covid antibody treatment could be effective for 90% of the patients. Close to 100% if the treatment is very early in the covid disease progression.
The artificially designed and produced antibody cocktail, is injected into people who are sick with covid, or would like to have roughly 4 weeks of immunity to covid.
The injected antibody will leave the person close to virus free in roughly 48 hours.
There are three other antibody designing companies that are working with the US Military to develop a covid antibody.
I believe all the companies that are working with the US military have had very good success with phase 1 and 2 trials.Regeneron has moved on to phase 3 trials of their new antibody.
Regeneron has received, $450 million to manufacture, the covid artificial antibody therapy. This is the same technology, that Regeneron and a second company, who is also working with the US military to develop artificial antibodies to defeat covid, used to stop Ebola.
https://investor.regeneron.com/news-releases/news-release-details/regeneron-announces-start-regn-cov2-phase-3-covid-19-prevention
https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/06/health/regeneron-coronavirus-antibody-drug-bn/index.html
“Regeneron starts Phase 3 trial of Covid antibody drug
About REGN-COV2
Regeneron scientists evaluated thousands of fully-human antibodies produced by the company’s proprietary VelocImmune® mice, which have been genetically-modified to have a human immune system, as well as antibodies isolated from ….
..to create REGN-COV2 and have scaled up this dual-antibody cocktail for clinical use with the company’s in-house VelociMab® and manufacturing capabilities.
REGN-COV2’s two antibodies bind non-competitively to the critical receptor binding domain of the virus’s spike protein, which diminishes the ability of mutant viruses to escape treatment and protects against spike variants that have arisen in the human population, as detailed in recent Science publications.
More recent research also demonstrates coverage against the now prevalent D614G variant (William of covid)
…to enroll 2,000 patients in the U.S.; the trial will assess SARS-CoV-2 infection status. The two Phase 2/3 treatment trials in hospitalized (estimated enrollment =1,850) and non-hospitalized (estimated enrollment =1,050) patients are planned to be conducted at approximately 150 sites in the U.S., Brazil, Mexico and Chile, and will evaluate virologic and clinical endpoints, with preliminary data expected later this summer. “
Uh, yeah… This is a research article in search of a follow up research grant to prove what many posters have already mentioned — antibodies are not the end-all of how the immune system works…
Perhaps it’s clever research grant marketing to push this article about a partial truth of how immune systems work (or don’t work) into the mainstream science news in hopes that there will be a grant coming to pay for more research.
IMHO, science isn’t supposed to be like a strip show where this is the first half of a show about stuff that most everyone in an experienced audience knows what the final product is going to look like…