Reference no: EM133312224

Assignment:

Why might the effect of extent of inflammation on severity be noticed before the effect of low antibody levels (inflammation from day of hospitalization, effect of antibodies seen a few days to weeks later in time)?

Please elaborate well and don't the same points given in question...

Ami's group also looked at T-cell responses throughout the acute period in a broader group of COVID-19 patients. These patients had confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2, were all unvaccinated and had no evidence of previous exposure to SARS-CoV-2 (i.e., hospitalization was result of first infection) but not all were hospitalized. Ami's study found that mild cases of COVID-19 were characterized by strong and early CD4+ and CD8+ T-cell responses. A result that has since been found by other research groups. Despite the role of T-cell responses in controlling COVID-19, vaccines design focused on eliciting a neutralizing antibody response.

SARS-CoV-2 mutates readily, and variants of concern (mutated variants of SARS-CoV-2) have the potential to escape neutralizing antibodies that are generated through vaccination with antigens derived from previous variants. This has led to vaccines becoming less effective as new variants of concern arise. Variants of concern have not had as much of an effect on T-cell responses (in other words the T-cell epitopes aren't mutating as quickly in a way that allows them to escape the previous responses).

Therefore, vaccines designed to elicit strong T-cell responses may help control disease even when VOCs are able to escape neutralizing antibody responses to vaccine antigens. Ami wants to redo the RIDRU study of T-cell responses using patients that were previously vaccinated against COVID-19 but had breakthrough infections (infections despite vaccination).