ABOVE: Coronavirus OC43
DR. ERSKINE PALMER, CDC
There are four common cold coronaviruses that we all catch at some stage. We generate antibodies to them, but our immune memory of them fades over time, and we get re-infected.
Their names are all too easily forgotten—OC43, HKU1, 229E, and NL63—but our immune systems may nevertheless remember them for a time. There have been hints that exposure to these common coronaviruses might offer some protection from COVID-19, mostly by looking at signs of immune memory in blood samples taken from before the pandemic. A study in the Journal of Clinical Investigation reports the first clinical evidence linking recent endemic coronavirus infections to less severe COVID-19 and even a reduced death rate in patients.
“The COVID-19 disease is actually much less severe in those patients who had documented endemic coronavirus infections.”
The authors at Boston University School of Medicine found evidence for this by ...
