Coronavirus, the immune response could be very different from person to person

Some preliminary research suggests that the type of antibody response to the virus differs from person to person for those who have contracted the infection. It is not yet clear how the immune system responds to the virus (photo: Stefano Guidi / Getty Images) About the immune system's response to the coronavirus, we still know (too) little. What we know is limited to what we have seen so far, it concerns a time window that is too narrow and only a few samples of those affected to draw conclusions about any immunity acquired by those who have already taken the virus. True, we have begun to piece together, for several aspects related to the immune response, but the results that continue to come from research, albeit preliminary, show that drawing reasonably certain conclusions is still premature. What seems clear, summarizes an analysis on Ars Technica today by putting together several researches, is that the response to the virus in the population is variable. Very variable.

Well understood. Not that it is an absolute novelty. That there is a variability in the response of the population to the virus is known: there are risk factors that predispose to very different pictures of the disease, more or less severe or even imperceptible, as happens in asymptomatic conditions. Gender differences also seem to be involved. But in this case the question concerns the response of the immune system from person to person, one of the key aspects on which coronavirus research focuses, which affects many epidemiological (see the issue of serological tests), therapeutic (with the possibilities offered by plasma and vaccine therapy) which are strictly clinical: can those who have fallen ill get back in touch?

What the research to date appears to suggest is that the immune responses are rather variable. In part, summarizes Ars Technica , they are for a variability intrinsic to the systems used to probe the immune responses themselves, but to want to go into more detail with the same antibody responses are different. In the plasma of many people recovering from Sars-Cov-2, summarizes a preprint on medRxiv contains small amounts of antibodies, but with concentrations rather variable. And still, the amount of neutralizing antibodies (able to bind and neutralize the target) seems to go hand-in-hand with the antibody.

That the levels of ancorpi, especially those with neutralizing , are rather variable among the patients seems to confirm this even a job in preprint , where the values range from levels not detectable to very high, and still another work in the field, always preliminary, he showed yes the presence, but for the most part at low levels.

On the variability of antibody responses in reality you speak from time to time, and also the same Avis , intervening in a note to clarify the usefulness of plasma iperimmune recalled how, not all patients develop antibodies that “equally and effectively”. What again is evident from this research, although preliminary, is that about how to answer the immune system to the virus, and if the responses that are observed are actually protective and for how much, we can say little. “At the moment it is not clear whether the acquisition of antibodies, especially for people with low antibody titer, may provide immunity in the future against the Sars-Cov-2 – we read in the closure of one of the preprint, it Will need more research to understand the minimum threshold of antibody and neutralizing activity needed to accurately predict the immunity” .