A new study published in The Lancet Microbe has found that COVID-19 neutralizing antibodies may last from days to decades.
A newly published study has found that COVID-19 antibodies in individuals may last from mere days to decades.
According to researchers who published the new study in The Lancet Microbe, individuals may have ranging levels of neutralizing antibodies that will last from anywhere between days to decades, depending on the individual.
The team of researchers followed 164 COVID-19 patients for six to nine months, and throughout that time, the researchers analyzed the patients’ blood for neutralizing antibodies against COVID-19.
What the researchers found was that the severity of the infection in the individual could be a deciding factor in how long neutralizing antibodies last. Another factor that the researchers found that could determine the longevity of these neutralizing antibodies is T-cell immunity.
Professor Wang Linfa, from Duke-NUS’ Emerging Infectious Diseases (EID) Program, a corresponding author of the study, said, “
The key message from this study is that the longevity of functional neutralizing antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 can vary greatly and it is important to monitor this at an individual level. This work may have implications for immunity longevity after vaccination, which will be part of our follow-up studies.”
Associate Professor David Lye, Director, Infectious Disease Research and Training Office, NCID, also a corresponding author of the study, said, “Our study examines neutralizing antibodies which are important in protection from COVID-19. We found that antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 wane in different people at different rates.
This emphasizes the importance of public health and social measures in ongoing pandemic outbreak response. However, the presence of T-cell immunity provides hope of longer-term protection which will require more studies and time for epidemiological and clinical evidence to confirm.”