German researchers uncover secret to children’s protection from coronavirus
- A child’s immune system appears to be better prepared for coronavirus attacks than adults
- Researchers say clues lie in cells of the upper respiratory tract being on constant high alert
A child’s immune system appears to be better prepared for coronavirus attacks than that of adults thanks to the cells of their upper respiratory tract being on constant high alert, according to new research.
The researchers found that in the event of an infection, children can quickly fight the virus before it massively multiplies.
This probably also explains why children are much less likely than adults to become seriously ill with Covid-19, as researchers from Berlin and Heidelberg universities report in the scientific journal Nature Biotechnology in August.
The authors say the findings may pave the way for more research as to whether scientists can pre-emptively stimulate protective responses in at-risk patients to offer them similar levels of protection to children when exposed to the virus.
“We wanted to understand why the virus defence apparently works so much better in children than in adults,” explained Irina Lehmann, head of the Molecular Epidemiology group at the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH) at Berlin’s Charite hospital.
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In search of an answer, the scientists took some cells from the nasal mucous of 42 healthy and infected children and 44 adults. They then analysed, among other things, the activity of certain genes in the individual cells.