RE: Finncap valuations research on 14/7/202019 Jul 2020 13:06
Alright PDMS.....little aggressive there! Quite simply saying there are a lot of unknowns around this virus and maybe antibodies aren’t the holy grail.
Melbourne University research has some interesting ideas.....
Researchers looking at how the immune system reacts in people who have had the disease once already found it did not offer as much protection as expected.
With some illnesses such as chickenpox, the body can remember exactly how to destroy it and becomes able to fend it off before symptoms start if it gets back into the body.
But the coronavirus — called SARS-CoV-2 — did not seem to trigger this response in everyone who caught it, according to the research that deals a blow to hopes for widespread immunity without a vaccine.
A study of 41 people in Australia found that only three of them developed a strong enough antibody immune response that they could block half of the viruses if they got into the body again.
On average, the immune system's antibodies were only able to block 14.1 per cent of the coronaviruses if someone was exposed to the illness a second time, making it likely that someone could get ill again.
Antibodies are only one type of immunity but they are usually the fastest-acting and what is needed to prevent illness.
Other types of immunity — such as that produced by white blood cells called T cells — may make disease less severe but not stop it completely. The Australian researchers said T cells appeared to be a better sign of immunity than antibodies.
The study was promising in that it showed coronavirus infection did stimulate the production of multiple types of immunity, including T cells and another form of white blood cell called B cells.
These could be 'boosted', one scientist suggested, if they weren't produced in large enough quantities naturally.
The Australian researchers warned a vaccine is 'urgently needed' because having had Covid-19 once might not protect people from getting it again.
The study comes as one of the world's leading pharmaceutical companies today said it will launch a treatment trial on patients in the UK to see if they can artificially boost someone's immune system so they can fight off the disease as if they already had it.
The study, done by the University of Melbourne, looked at how antibody immunity develops in people who have been infected with coronavirus
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