Repeated SARS\u002DCoV\u002D2 infections may be prematurely aging human immune systems, research suggests
The concern is that people will be less able to hold off future bugs and pathogens like influenza, or that unsettled immune systems could lead to an increase in diabetes and other auto-immune diseases.
Bowdish sensed that immune imbalance, a key feature of long COVID, might be a problem the first time she looked at a blood sample from someone hospitalized with SARS-CoV-2. “We were trying to figure out why some people die in the ICU and others don’t,” said Bowdish. The blood “didn’t look like human blood anymore. Their white blood cells were unrecognizable compared to healthy donors.
“We’ve learned that this virus, and we can’t tell you how, leads to the death of a whole bunch of T cells, and then seems to, at least in some people, lead to damage to the white blood cells they make after that infection,” said Bowdish, a Canada research chair in aging and immunity. In some cases, the blood cells never fully recover “and seem to generate auto-immune reactions,” where the body’s immune system attacks its own tissues.
T cells have a life cycle, Pirzada said. Naïve cells are those that haven’t yet responded to an infection. “Once a T cell commits to responding to one thing, it can’t respond to anything else,” Bowdish explained. “As we age, more and more of them become committed to responding to infections, or all the other things we might be exposed to, and fewer and fewer are available to respond to new threats.
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