Why do children tolerate COVID-19 more easily than adults? Scientists have guesses
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Scientists have tried to figure out why young children are less likely to suffer from a severe course of COVID-19 than adults. It turned out that children’s immune response is different from that usually observed in adults.
Babies and young children infected with SARS-CoV-2 had many antibodies to fight the virus from the onset of the disease and for a long time.
Also, in children, a high level of pro-inflammatory proteins was observed in the nose, but not in the blood, as in adults.
The corresponding study was published in the journal Cell, reports MedicalXpress.
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81 children, including infants and young children, took part in the study.
The research team trained mothers to take weekly nasal swabs from their infants starting at 2 weeks of age. The team also regularly drew blood from the babies for analysis starting at 6 weeks of age, when the babies became infected with SARS-CoV-2, and in the following weeks and months.
These samples allowed the scientists to study the children’s immune responses before, during and after the first contact with the virus.
54 children were infected and had a mild form of COVID-19, and 27 healthy children were the “control group”. At the time of infection, the children were between 1 month and 4 years old.
Also, scientists took weekly nasal swabs from 19 sick and 19 healthy mothers, blood samples from 89 sick and 13 healthy adults.
Researchers have studied many aspects of the immune response of infants and adults to the virus using systems immunology.
It turned out that the reaction of antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 in younger children differs from the reaction of adults. Usually, antibodies in adults are produced gradually over several weeks, and then decrease.
In contrast, the children produced high levels of antibodies immediately, and these levels remained high throughout the 300-day observation period.
Scientists also found that in the blood of adults with SARS-CoV-2 infection, there were high levels of pro-inflammatory cytokines (protein molecules involved in the inflammation process), which are associated with a severe course of COVID-19 and death.
These proteins were not present in the blood of infants and children. However, many pro-inflammatory cytokines and an antiviral cytokine were found in the children’s noses.
According to the researchers, cytokines could destroy the SARS-CoV-2 infection directly at the point of entry of the virus into the body of children, which potentially explains the mild course of the disease on COVID-19.
It will be recalled that earlier studies confirmed that newborn children have a lower risk of contracting the coronavirus than older children. However, if infants do contract COVID-19, they are at greater risk of severe disease.
Read also: Children and COVID-19: how babies transmit the coronavirus, “red flags” for parents and what to do for mothers in labor
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