Natural antibodies against COVID last at least seven months in children

Children infected with COVID-19 develop circulating natural antibodies that last for at least seven months, according to a new study led by researchers at UTHealth Houston and published in Pedriatrics.

The research indicates that 96% of those infected studied continued to have antibodies up to seven months later, but 58% of the sample tested negative for infection-induced antibodies in their third and last measurement.

These results do not include the impact of vaccine protection.

The results of the children who had passed the coronavirus did not differ “absolutely” based on whether the child was asymptomatic, the severity of the symptoms, when they contracted the virus, or if they were at a healthy weight or gender. “It was the same for everyone” said lead author Sarah Messiah of UTHealth Houston.

Medical literature on adults indicates that natural infection plus vaccine-induced protection provides the best defense against COVID-19.

However, some parents think that just because their child has had the disease, they are already protected and do not need to be vaccinated, Messiah said.

Although this studyit’s encouraging” In the sense that a certain amount of natural antibodies lasts at least six months in children, the absolute protection threshold is not yet known, so Messiah encouraged vaccination, since it is an additional protection.

The team examined data from 218 children in the state of Texas between the ages of 5 and 19 in the Care study, which began in October 2020 to examine the status of COVID-19 antibodies over time.

The volunteers gave the researchers three blood samples, which were collected before the development of the vaccination and during the waves caused by the delta and omicron variants. So far three phases of the study have been completed.