It is almost a month into the stay at home orders set in place by local and national governments forcing people to stay inside to limit the spread of the coronavirus. It is crazy to see how things have begun to settle down with everyone doing their best to limit face to face interaction with others, but we are still seeing many not abide to these orders. Some are going outside into large public places and are potential carriers for the virus, ultimately putting many other people at risk of contracting the disease. This not only puts your friends at risk of getting the disease, but also our healthcare professionals at the forefront who are day-in and day-out having to help many people overcome this virus. But, the focus of this article will be on the real, biological responders to the virus. We are seeing so much on the news about what hospitals and researchers are doing to stop the spread of the virus, but what are our antibodies doing to stop it. Lets look.
In an article titled, “Immune responses in COVID-19 and potential vaccines: Lessons learned from SARS and MERS epidemic“, researchers look to compare previous forms of coronaviruses and epidemics that compare to the novel coronavirus we are currently experiencing. The article states, “a limited serology details of SARS-CoV-2 was reported. In a preliminary study, one patient showed peak specific IgM at day 9 after disease onset and the switching to IgG by week 2.25”. With only the IgM antibody, this would represent someone who has recently started fighting off the infection. With only the IgG antibody, this would mean someone has been able to fight off the virus and have the necessary antibodies to fight it off (most likely from a vaccine). If we are able to find someone who is positive for IgG, this would allow researchers to find the correct antibodies to fight off the disease and thus create the right vaccination. To have both mean that they are in the process of fighting off the disease and are beginning to find antibodies that will completely rid the disease. As seen in this article and with this disease, we can see that there is a long onset for primary responders and have difficulty converting to IgG quickly. In my opinion, this will make the vaccine for the virus more difficult to make because researchers have to wait for time to pass before they can fully understand what the antibody necessary is.
From another article titled, “Antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 in patients of novel coronavirus disease 2019“, researchers are looking at how our bodes are responding to the coronavirus and they specifically look at those who contracted the disease in 2019. From their results, they found that “the acute antibody response in SARS-CoV-2 infection patient is very similar to many other acute viral infections; the serological testing can be a powerful
approach in achieving timely diagnosis; and the total antibody is more sensitive than IgM
and IgG for detecting SARS-CoV-2 infection”. From this, they were also able to find that antibody tests were significant with the addition of RNA tests. After reading this article, it is very important to realize the ability to look at these tests to determine how our bodies are reacting to this virus. As with this report they show that just looking at Ab tests for antibody response allowed for the best detection of the coronavirus, but in my opinion, I believe that further research will show that presence of IgM and IgG will make detection of the virus much easier as well. But as seen in the previous article mentioned, with these antibodies taking longer to appear in the body, this could be a potential reason for the Ab tests to be more sensitive in detecting the virus since it would not need as much time to appear in the system.
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