Recovered COVID patients may have immune memory for up to 8 months

Recovered COVID patients may have immune memory for up to 8 months January 14, 2021, 11:55

In a US study published in Science, researchers detected immune memory to SARS-CoV-2 across all immune cell types studied for as long as 8 months after patients became ill with COVID-19.

In the study, a team led by researchers from the La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California analyzed levels of antibodies and other cells involved in immune response to the novel coronavirus in 254 specimens from 188 recovered adult COVID-19 patients, including 43 samples taken 6 months or more after infection.

Recruited from sites across the United States, study participants had a range of COVID-19 illness severity, from asymptomatic to severe, although most had mild cases. Of all participants, 93% were never hospitalized; of the 7% who were hospitalized, some required intensive care.

Concentrations of anti-spike protein immunoglobulin G (IgG), anti-nucleocapsid IgG, RBD IgG, and PSV neutralizing antibodies decayed slightly but remained relatively stable for more than 6 months, and spike-specific B cells were more abundant at 6 months than at 1 month after illness onset.

Concentrations of SARS-CoV-2–specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, which have been linked to more mild disease, waned to half their original concentrations by 3 to 5 months.

The authors noted that understanding immune memory of SARS-CoV-2 is important to improving diagnostic tests and vaccines and for predicting future pandemic activity. Noting that immune memory varies among recovered COVID-19 patients, they called for long-term studies to better understand these variations and what they mean in terms of immunity.

"Nevertheless, our data show immune memory in at least three immunological compartments was measurable in ~95% of subjects 5 to 8 months [after infection], indicating that durable immunity against secondary COVID-19 disease is a possibility in most individuals," the authors wrote.

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