Why Catching a Cold Might Actually Be Good for Kids?

Children infected with the seasonal common cold are likely to have immunity against COVID-19, according to research.

New research suggests that children who contract the seasonal common cold may have some immunity against COVID-19.

During the pandemic, medical doctors and researchers noticed that children and adolescents infected with COVID became less ill than adults.

Common Cold
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‘Building immunity against COVID-19 may be as simple as catching a common cold, according to recent research.’

Surprising Connection Between Common Cold and COVID-19

To understand this, researchers from Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, studied unique blood samples from children taken before the pandemic.

They identified memory T cells that react to cells infected with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID.

A possible explanation for this immunity in children is that they already had colds caused by one of the four coronaviruses causing seasonal common cold symptoms, the researchers said.

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This new study reinforces this hypothesis and shows that T cells previously activated by the OC43 virus can cross-react against SARS-CoV-2.

"These reactions are especially strong early in life and grow much weaker as we get older," said corresponding author Annika Karlsson, research group leader at the Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institutet.

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Kids' Immune Systems Adapt and Strengthen!

"Our findings show how the T-cell response develops and changes over time and can guide the future monitoring and development of vaccines."

The study is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The results indicate that the memory T-cell response to coronaviruses develops as early as the age of two.

The study was based on 48 blood samples from two- and six-year-old children, and 94 samples from adults between the ages of 26 and 83.

The analysis also included blood samples from 58 people who had recently recovered from COVID.

"Next, we'd like to do analogous studies of younger and older children, teenagers, and young adults to better track how the immune response to coronaviruses develops from childhood to adulthood," said Marion Humbert, a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Medicine Huddinge, Karolinska Institutet.

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