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Does covid change the response to subsequent infections?

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Does covid change the response to subsequent infections?

Have you had the flu after covid and did it feel “different”? Generalizing the question: what are the long-term effects of a SARS-CoV-2 infection on the immune system, and on the response to other pathogens? The question is complex, but part of the answer may depend on gender.

On men, covid seems to leave a more marked immune heredity which influences the body’s reaction to subsequent infections. A discovery, the one just published on Natureapparently counterintuitive, for those involved in immunology.

Is everything back to the way it was? The research was conducted by a team of scientists from Niaid, the US National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, coordinated by John Tsang, professor of immunobiology at Yale. Tsang was convinced that after viral infections, the immune system returns to its previous levels of responsiveness.

The covid pandemic gave him the opportunity to test this hypothesis: together with Rachel Sparks, first author of the study, he analyzed the immune responses of about seventy people to the flu vaccine, then comparing the reactions of those who had previously had covid in mild form with those of those who had never been infected with SARS-CoV-2.

Increased alert. Surprisingly, men who recovered from covid were found to produce more antibodies against the flu virus after the flu vaccine than all other subjects, men and women, with or without previous infections.

In essence, the basic response of their immune system to pathogens appeared to have been altered by the encounter with SARS-CoV-2: «A total surprise – comments Tsang – women usually show stronger immune responses to pathogens and vaccines, and they are also more prone to autoimmune diseases.

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More prone to hospitalizations and death. However, the discovery is in line with what was observed especially in the early stages of the pandemic: men tend to fall ill more often with severe covid and are more subject to the “cascading” immune reactions typical of the infection.

The new work seems to confirm that even mild cases of covid stimulate a more marked inflammatory response in the male body: not surprisingly, men vaccinated against the flu showed that they had not only more antibodies, but also higher levels of interferons, the proteins produced by cells to defend themselves against viral invasion. Usually, healthy women produce more interferons than men when attacked by a pathogen, but with covid it seems to be different.

Anticipation of the future? The conclusions of the study will be relevant, given the hundreds of millions of people around the world who have recovered from covid: how will the pandemic affect our bodies’ response to future infections? The discovery could have implications in the search for treatments against long covid, or be exploited positively, to create more effective vaccines against other viruses.

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