You might remember that during the pandemic, children were less likely than adults to get seriously ill from the Covid-19 virus. But why? 🤔 Donna Farber, Professor of Microbiology & Immunology at Columbia University in New York, might have an answer!
Our immune system relies on a special kind of white blood cell called T cells, to recognize when our bodies cells are infected and to help coordinate the fight against viruses, like Covid-19.
T cells are key for a healthy immune system because they can “remember” past infections, allowing them to respond more quickly the next time the virus shows up, like specialists trained for a particular job.
Children also have T cells, but Donna Farber found that children have many more so-called “naïve” T cells, T cells that have not yet encountered an antigen, which are very effective at fighting new viruses. This gave them an advantage when they encountered Covid-19.
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So, it’s generally agreed that infants are more vulnerable to infections. They haven’t seen viruses and they don’t have their own memory response. However, that’s not the whole story. In fact, infants see many new pathogens. They’re introduced to everything, you know, when they’re born. They need to have an immune response that’s going to be strong to fight off all of these new pathogens. So when you start looking deeper, you realize that their immune cells are actually quite functional. And in fact, they’re even more functional than the same kind of immune cell in adults.
