Covid-19: McMahon says vaccines need to be more accessible
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Covid patients who have been exposed to other coronavirus-based diseases, such as seasonal colds, may have milder symptoms according to a new study. Patients who had high antibody levels for previous coronaviruses showed a faster immune response when exposed to COVID-19. They were also less likely to contract the illness in the first place. The results have been published in Nature Communications.
The research compared blood samples donated before the pandemic to current donors know to be infected with COVID-19.
These types of tests can improve our understanding of antibodies and how to measure resistance.
People who had a strong reaction to harmless coronaviruses were also better able to defend against COVID-19.
Four coronaviruses that are responsible for a large amount of seasonal infections are two alphacoronaviruses, and two betacoronaviruses.
These should not be confused with the alpha and beta strains of COVID-19.
The researchers found that while the viruses differ significantly in structure and sequence, antibodies for the alphacoronavirus and betacoronavirus did respond to COVID-19.
It is not clear the extent of this reaction, and the researchers not that it may be a false positive.
These milder coronaviruses still account for a large number of a still proportion of overall illness and hospitalisation.
The risk of developing pneumonia or other complications increases with age and other factors.
A 2018 study of 13048 people with fever and respiratory infections found that 85.4 percent tested positive for these coronaviruses.
They were found to be more prevalent in the winter, but each strain behaved slightly differently across multiple years.
The effect that the study is examining is known as cross-protection, where a mild infection provides immunity against a more dangerous strain.
It has been examined in a wide variety of illnesses and was the foundation for early vaccine research.
The early vaccines for smallpox were made by deliberately infecting people with cowpox.
One review published in med hypotheses described the scientist, Edward Jenner as “both lucky and crazy” for the fact that his use of cowpox did protect people against smallpox.
The mechanism of cross-protection is not fully understood by immunology.
There are conserved areas of viruses outside of the spike proteins targeted by antibodies.
Cross protection has also been noted in plants, where it is important to protect against some crop blights.
Scientists have speculated that expanding our understanding of cross protection could enable broad spectrum vaccines that protect against an entire class of pathogens.
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