July 21, 2020

expert reaction to correspondence paper looking at decline in antibody levels in a group of people with mild COVID-19 in the US

A correspondence paper, published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), has looked at the antibody levels in a group of patients in the US with mild COVID-19.

Prof Rowland Kao, Sir Timothy O’Shea Professor of Veterinary Epidemiology and Data Science, University of Edinburgh, said:

“The important thing about this correspondence is that it adds to the evidence that prolonged immunity is not, at least in some cases, long lasting (in this case, in reference to individuals with only mild symptoms).  Understanding the relationship between the Immune responses in these studies and protection against infection, severity of disease or transmission is difficult to evaluate.  A crucial question is the extent to which these mildly infected individuals contribute to onward transmission.  Another one, is whether or not a mildly infected individual, if infected again, is any more or less likely than average to develop a severe infection the second time around.”

‘Rapid Decay of Anti–SARS-CoV-2 Antibodies in Persons with Mild Covid-19’ by F. Javier Ibarrondo et al. was published in the NEJM on Tuesday 21 July 2020.

DOI: 10.1056/NEJMc2025179

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www.sciencemediacentre.org/tag/covid-19

Declared interests

None received.