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Does this family have the answer to the most intriguing corona question?
A case of a couple of Australian parents who fell ill in Corona and their three healthy children who were not infected, even though they lived in the same house, may provide us with an answer to the question why children are less ill than adults.
And the answer - well, it's very interesting
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Walla!
health
Thursday, 19 November 2020, 08:42
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From the early days of the corona epidemic, scientists have noticed that children are less susceptible to the virus, although the exact reasons for this were not (and still are not) clear.
Now, an exceptional case in Australia may provide a unique insight into the mystery, thanks to the experience of a young family from Melbourne.
In a family of five, both parents contracted COVID-19 after attending a wedding far from home without their children.
Despite this, the symptoms appeared only days after they returned home and without their knowledge, they brought the corona into their home, exposing their children to the virus.
Once both parents developed symptoms - including cough, stuffy nose, fever and headache - the whole family underwent corona tests.
The parents' tests returned positive, while the children's tests returned negative.
"It was amazing because they spent a week and a half with us while we were positive about COVID-19," mother Leila Swanko told ABC News.
However, the really surprising part is yet to come.
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Health care workers in Australia asked the family to repeat the tests, but again the children's tests returned negative to SARS-CoV-2, although the two boys in the family (aged 9 and 7) suffered from mild symptoms.
The youngest girl, 5 years old, remained asymptomatic throughout the period of time, although she often slept in the same bed with her parents during their illness.
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The researchers were surprised by the children's negative results while living in close proximity to their sick parents, and asked the family to take part in the study, analyze blood, saliva, feces and urine samples, and undergo a PCR test one every two to three days.
Did not get sick, but developed antibodies.
Corona test tent (Photo: AP)
Although the tests showed that the children were consistently negative for Corona, the researchers found antibodies specific to SARS-CoV-2 in saliva of the whole family, and in serological tests.
In other words, the children were never found to be positive for the virus, but a certain level of exposure to the virus nevertheless elicited an immune response in their body.
Just the beginning of the problem
"The youngest girl, who showed no symptoms at all, had the strongest antibody response," said immunologist Melanie Nyland of the Institute for Pediatric Research at Murdoch (MCRI).
"Despite the immune response that was triggered in all the children, the levels of cytokines, proteins in the blood that can cause an inflammatory response, remained low."
"This study is a kind of first step to an in-depth examination of children's immune systems and to see what components may respond to the virus," said the study's author, Pediatrician Shidan Tosef of the University of Melbourne.
"The fact that these children were able to fend off the virus and without even showing a positive test result indicates that their immune system is able to respond in a certain way and deal effectively with the virus, without them being very ill in the future."
In fact, the researchers think the children were indeed infected with the virus, but their immune system somehow managed to produce an antivirus that was very effective in limiting virus replication, unlike their parents.
That immune response was probably very effective, so much so that it was able to lower the viral load so low that the PCR test could not detect it.
And this is a problem in itself.
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