While early research on the adaptive immune response to COVID-19 primarily looked at antibodies, more information is now emerging on how T cells react to the SARS-CoV-2 virus – addressing a crucial knowledge gap.
This claim comes from Daniel Altmann and Rosemary Boyton from Imperial College London in a new paper.
While antibody responses are generally much easier to study, T cells are known to play a more important role in protecting the body against viral infections, in the context of COVID-19.
“Antibody responses appear short-lived and T cell memory is potentially more durable,” Altmann and Boyton write. “It’s time to admit that we really need the T cell data too.”
They state that standardised tests to measure T cell immunity to SARS-CoV-2 could be designed using methods in common with established tests for T cell immunity to Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
