Common Cold Defending Children Against COVID-19, Article Review Example

The primary risk for SARS-CoV-2 severity clinically is a person’s biological age (O’Driscoll et al., 2020). Although comorbidities become more intense with age, increasing the likelihood of developing a serious infection, they do not account for why getting older is a separate risk or, more specifically, SARS-CoV-2 infection’s mildness in young adults and children. It would be beneficial to characterize these age-related variations further to know immune reactions to SARS-CoV-2 and note kid’s responses to natural infections. As a result, it could then be used to create the best possible vaccination plans for young people.

Dowell et al. (2021) did a quantitative examination of T cells and antibody reactions to SARS-CoV-2 using one hundred and fifty-four adults and ninety-one children with moderate or asymptomatic illness. According to the authors’ research, in comparison to adults, children have superior immune responses. Dowell et al. (2021) assert that SARS-CoV-2 infection upregulates, or “back boosts,” these increased immune responses, which they believe are a result of past HCoV exposures.

Early projections for 2020 showed that persons over sixty-five years constituted 80 per cent of hospital admissions and had a 23-fold higher chance of dying than those under sixty-five years, underscoring the age’s significance when looking at risk factors (Mueller et al., 2020). The pattern persisted throughout the epidemic. Current studies show that as of 2021, people over the age of sixty-five accounted for about seventy-six per cent of the total deaths in the US (Dowell et al., 2021). A seminal analysis determined that children (five to nine years) had the lowest infection fatality ratio, with adults (thirsty years and above) having the highest ratio (Dowell et al., 2021). These findings make us wonder whether immunological reactions to SARS-CoV-2 may vary between kids and mature people.

Infected as well as uninfected children of the same ages and adults grouped into sizable well-controlled data sets were used by Dowell et al. (2019). Cross-reactive antibody recall and cellular immunological responses were quantified using the cohort, allowing the scientists to examine how they can vary between two different age groups. Only minor infections with no symptoms were present in all research participants. Children exhibited a different immunological profile significantly for cellular and humoral immunity in those aged three to eleven (seven years median) compared to adults (twenty to seventy-one years) with a median of forty-one years.

Figure 1: All Ages'(old and young) Immunity to COVID Spike Glycoprotein (Source: Nature Immunology, 2021).

SARS-CoV-2 S2 component is substantially retained with coronaviruses that are currently in circulation. Because of this, an immune response to SARS-CoV-2 frequently cross-react with other members of a beta coronavirus clade, suggesting that some people, especially kids with high immunity levels to common viruses, may already have immunity to SARS-CoV-2 and exhibit production of a potent T cells and antibodies response.

Dowell et al. (2021) demonstrated that children have strong humoral immune reactions that are spike specific and polyclonal, that prove to be quantitatively superior to antibody responses in adults twelve months after infection. Kids and adults have the same capacity to neutralize a virus, despite children having more robust antibodies to bind to VOC spike proteins (Dowell et al., 2021). Children have better retention capabilities of antibodies responsible for binding to spike epitopes that are non-neutralizing. These findings by Dowell et al. (2021) demonstrate how kids, produce robust polyclonal plasma antibody titers that have more significant ability to bind to the SARS-CoV-2 VOC. However, they are still of the same strength as antibodies’ response in adults.

Dowell et al. (2021) also contrasted the reactions of T cell in kids and mature people. Following SARS-CoV-2 infection, kids also experienced strong cellular immunological reactions to spike proteins, showing similarities to antibody profiles. In experiments using envelope proteins, peptide pools that are overlapping, IFN-?, T cells combinations, membrane, and nucleocapsid, reactions were equally common in SARS-CoV-2 adults and kids who are seropositive. In the younger patients, there were twice as many spot-forming cells. Adults with T cells that are less cross-reactive may be unable to adequately control the SARS-CoV-2 infections. It was also demonstrated using flow cytometry and multi-analyte bead assay that most spike-specific T cells have CD8+ and production of IL-2 significantly decreases kids’ responses to virus-specific T cells (Dowell et al., 2021). The scientists have shown that a large percentage of children had an enhanced HCoV-SARS-CoV-2 response using pre-pandemic negative participants and SARS-CoV-2 seronegative participants.

Even though additional research is required, it is becoming increasingly apparent that antibodies, CD8+ and CD4+ T cells play a role in the overall SARS-CoV-2 sickness management. It may be possible to rationally create pan-coronavirus treatments or vaccines as a result of ongoing research on HCoVs and SARS-CoV-2 and its potential contribution to differences in SARS-CoV-2 sickness in clinics (Dowell et al., 2021). The information reported here, for instance, suggests that vaccinations intended to increase T cells resistance to SARS-CoV-2, as well as plasma antibodies to the S2 domain may offer improved protection.

Dowell et al. (2021) have shown, at the level of bulk serology, polyclonal plasma antibodies pool in kids is boosted to target conserved epitopes across SARS-CoV-2 and HCoV spike glycoprotein preferentially. This characteristic obliquely suggests that cross-reactive antibodies may be helpful in the recovery from SARS-CoV-2 virus infection. The fact that this study only used polyclonal plasma antibodies that are pooled and not antibodies clone that is monoclonal has several limitations (Dowell et al., 2021). For example, it is assumed plasma antibodies were already present. Cross-reactive clones of antibodies in SARS-CoV-2’s convalescent plasma have been discovered using proteomics approaches (Dowell et al., 2021). These antibodies are often S2-directed and mostly make up more than forty per cent of the antibodies that make up the polyclonal titer to spike proteins (Anderson et al., 2021).

The information provided by Dowell et al. (2021) should be helpful in future research in areas such as immune interactions’ cross-reactivity across seasonal HCoVs and SARS-CoV-2, pre-existing humoral immunity’s role, the degree to which immune imprinting may regulate serological recalling and “back boost”, and the development of a new pan-coronavirus vaccine using S2 immunogens (see Figure 1).

Reference list

Anderson, E.M., Goodwin, E.C., Verma, A., Arevalo, C.P., Bolton, M.J., Weirick, M.E., Gouma, S., McAllister, C.M., Christensen, S.R., Weaver, J., Hicks, P., Manzoni, T.B., Oniyide, O., Ramage, H., Mathew, D., Baxter, A.E., Oldridge, D.A., Greenplate, A.R., Wu, J.E. and Alanio, C. (2021). Seasonal human coronavirus antibodies are boosted upon SARS-CoV-2 infection but not associated with protection. Cell, [online] 184(7), pp.1858-1864.e10. doi:10.1016/j.cell.2021.02.010.

Dowell, A.C., Butler, M.S., Jinks, E., Tut, G., Lancaster, T., Sylla, P., Begum, J., Bruton, R., Pearce, H., Verma, K., Logan, N., Tyson, G., Spalkova, E., Margielewska-Davies, S., Taylor, G.S., Syrimi, E., Baawuah, F., Beckmann, J., Okike, I.O. and Ahmad, S. (2021). Children develop robust and sustained cross-reactive spike-specific immune responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection. Nature Immunology, 23(1), pp.40–49. doi:10.1038/s41590-021-01089-8.

Mueller, A.L., McNamara, M.S. and Sinclair, D.A. (2020). Why does COVID-19 disproportionately affect older people? Aging, [online] 12(10), pp.9959–9981. doi:10.18632/aging.103344.

Nature Immunology (2021). Fig. 1: Immunity to coronavirus spike glycoprotein in the young and old. | Nature Immunology. www.nature.com. [online] Available at: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41590-021-01094-x/figures/1 [Accessed 17 Nov. 2022].

O’Driscoll, M., Dos Santos, G.R., Wang, L., Cummings, D.A.T., Azman, A.S., Paireau, J., Fontanet, A., Cauchemez, S. and Salje, H. (2020). Age-specific mortality and immunity patterns of SARS-CoV-2. Nature, [online] pp.1–9. doi:10.1038/s41586-020-2918-0.