Four seasonal coronaviruses—2 of which are betacoronaviruses, like SARS-CoV-2—cause about 30% of common colds. Instead of helping to fight off COVID-19, antibodies to these pathogens may interfere with the SARS-CoV-2 immune response, a recent study of health care workers suggests. Although these preexisting antibodies are ubiquitous, individuals’ varying levels of them might factor into the broad spectrum of responses to the novel coronavirus, which range from immunity against infection all the way to severe respiratory distress and death.
The Backstory
Almost since the COVID-19 pandemic began, scientists have investigated how immunity to the seasonal coronaviruses might influence infections with SARS-CoV-2, a new but related virus. A number of reports now show that preexisting common cold coronavirus antibodies are active in SARS-CoV-2 infections, according to Patrick Wilson, PhD, a professor of pediatrics and a scientist in the Gale and Ira Drukier Institute for Children’s Health at Weill Cornell Medicine, who was not involved with the new study. Last year, Wilson and colleagues at the University of Chicago, where he was based at the time, found that people with severe acute SARS-CoV-2 infections had substantial numbers of antibody–secreting B cells that reacted to common cold coronaviruses. The cells had highly mutated and variable genes, likely indicating that they predated the patients’ novel coronavirus infections. As for an influence on COVID-19, one early 2021 University of Pennsylvania study concluded that preexisting antibodies to common cold coronaviruses did not correlate with SARS-CoV-2 protection. But the overall findings have been inconsistent. Taken together, it’s hard to say which way they lean because the studies’ scope, participants, and methods have varied, according to Maureen McGargill, PhD, the senior author of the recent health care workers study and an associate faculty member in immunology at St Jude Children’s Research Hospital, where the research took place. “Keeping these caveats in mind, there were seven reports that concluded high levels of common coronavirus immunity was beneficial, while four reported that it was detrimental, and three reported that it did not have an impact,” McGargill wrote in an email to JAMA. In her study, published in Cell Host & Microbe this January, she and St Jude colleagues investigated whether different levels of preexisting immunity to common cold coronaviruses influenced the likelihood of becoming infected with SARS-CoV-2 or accounted for diverse outcomes following infection. “This is important to study as we still do not understand why some individuals are more susceptible than others to SARS-CoV-2 infection,” she explained....
Published in JAMA (Jan. 26, 2022):
https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2022.0326