Immune to Corona? Previous flu-like illnesses play a huge role in the fight against the virus

Depending on what cold you have had in the past, this can affect the way your immune system reacts.

• Over

  time,

  our

  immune system

  learns to

  fight

  off

  the

  coronavirus

  *.

• But even people who have not yet

  suffered

  from

  Covid-19

  can be

  immune

  to

  Corona

  *.

• A new

  study by scientists from the Berlin Charité

  aims to explain this finding.

Why is it that some people

get seriously ill with

the

while others hardly notice any symptoms?

The answer to this is complex and the subject of intense research.

A research team from the

 and the

now identified

a possible influencing factor 

, according to a press release from the Charité.

Coronavirus study shows: Not only people with Covid-19 are immune to corona

For their study, the researchers obtained immune cells from the blood of 18

who had been admitted to the Charité for treatment and tested positive for

.

In addition, they isolated immune cells from the blood of 68 healthy people who had demonstrably never

come into contact

with the new

.

They then stimulated the immune cells with small, artificially produced fragments of the so-called spike protein from SARS-CoV-2.

It forms the coronavirus-typical "crown" on the surface of the virus and enables it to enter human cells.

The research group then checked whether the so-called

cells, which are responsible for a reaction in the immune system, had been activated by this stimulation.

The result:

In 15 of the 18 COVID-19 sufferers, i.e. 85 percent, the

reacted

to the fragments of the virus surface.

"We had not expected otherwise, the

patients'

fighting the new

and therefore reacted to it in the test tube," explains Dr.

Claudia Giesecke-Thiel, one of the three lead authors of the study.

"The fact that the T helper cells did not

react to the virus fragments

in all

is probably due to the fact that the T cells cannot be activated outside the body in an acute or particularly severe stage of an illness."

+

A nurse holds a swab in a test tube.

Research on the coronavirus is ongoing worldwide.

© picture alliance / Sebastian Kahnert / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa

Also interesting:

Immune system "cross-reacts" - that's behind the technical term

To the surprise of the team, however, reactive

were also found in the blood of the healthy

: 24 of the 68 tested (35 percent) had memory

that

recognized

fragments.

The scientists noticed that the immune cells of

and healthy people reacted to different parts of the virus envelope.

While the T helper cells of the patients recognized the spike protein over its entire length, the T helper cells of the healthy subjects were mainly activated by sections of the spike protein that

resemble

the corresponding sections of the spike protein of more harmless

.

"This indicates that the

the healthy respond to

because they had to deal with domestic

in the past

," says Dr.

Giesecke-Thiel.

"Because one property of the T-helper cells is that they can not only be activated by a precisely 'matching' pathogen, but also by 'sufficiently similar' intruders." who reacted to SARS-CoV-2, were also activated by various cold coronaviruses - and thus "

-reacted" by definition

.

You might also be interested in:

Does a previous illness protect against the coronavirus?

The question of how this cross-reactivity affects a possible

in healthy test persons

cannot be answered by the current study from the specialist journal “Nature”.

"In principle, it is conceivable that cross-reactive

a protective effect, for example by helping the body to produce antibodies against the novel coronavirus more quickly," explains Prof. Dr.

Leif Erik Sander, also lead author of the study.

"In this case, recent

would

probably

alleviate the symptoms of

.

However, it is also possible that cross-reactive immunity leads to a misdirected immune response - with negative effects on the course of Covid-19.

We know such a situation with the dengue virus, for example. "

2/2 The study "Charité Corona Cross" with @TUBerlin and @MPI_MolGen should now show whether this has a protective effect on the course of a # SARSCoV2 infection.

We are still looking for # COVID19 recovered people & people who were infected with a cold CoV.

- Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin (@ChariteBerlin) July 29, 2020

In order to finally clarify whether coronavirus colds that you had suffered in the past actually protect against a later infection with

- and thus possibly explain the different manifestations of the symptoms - future-oriented studies are necessary.

One such study - the 

- has now started under the direction of the Charité in cooperation with the Technical University of Berlin and the MPIMG.

To this end, the scientists are currently looking for people who are proven to have Covid-19 and who have recovered.

People who were verifiably infected with a cold coronavirus such as "229E", "OC43", "NL63" or "HKU1" in recent years can also take part in the study.

The contact information can be found in the press release.

(nh / charite.de)

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List of rubric lists: © picture alliance / Sebastian Kahnert / dpa-Zentralbild / dpa