• HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
Thursday, October 9, 2025
BIOENGINEER.ORG
No Result
View All Result
  • Login
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
  • HOME
  • NEWS
  • EXPLORE
    • CAREER
      • Companies
      • Jobs
        • Lecturer
        • PhD Studentship
        • Postdoc
        • Research Assistant
    • EVENTS
    • iGEM
      • News
      • Team
    • PHOTOS
    • VIDEO
    • WIKI
  • BLOG
  • COMMUNITY
    • FACEBOOK
    • INSTAGRAM
    • TWITTER
No Result
View All Result
Bioengineer.org
No Result
View All Result
Home NEWS Science News Health

COVID-19 antibodies persist at least nine months after infection

Bioengineer by Bioengineer
July 19, 2021
in Health
Reading Time: 3 mins read
0
IMAGE
Share on FacebookShare on TwitterShare on LinkedinShare on RedditShare on Telegram

IMAGE

Credit: Andrea Crisanti

Testing of an entire Italian town shows antibody levels remain high nine months after SARS-CoV-2 infection, whether symptomatic or asymptomatic.

Researchers from the University of Padua and Imperial College London tested more than 85 percent of the 3,000 residents of Vo’, Italy, in February/March 2020 for infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and tested them again in May and November 2020 for antibodies against the virus.

The team found that 98.8 percent of people infected in February/March showed detectable levels of antibodies in November, and there was no difference between people who had suffered symptoms of COVID-19 and those that had been symptom-free. The results are published today in Nature Communications.

Antibody levels were tracked using three ‘assays’ – tests that detect different types of antibodies that respond to different parts of the virus. The results showed that while all antibody types showed some decline between May and November, the rate of decay was different depending on the assay.

The team also found cases of antibody levels increasing in some people, suggesting potential re-infections with the virus, providing a boost to the immune system.

Lead author Dr Ilaria Dorigatti, from the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis and the Abdul Latif Jameel Institute for Disease and Emergency Analytics (J-IDEA) at Imperial, said: “We found no evidence that antibody levels between symptomatic and asymptomatic infections differ significantly, suggesting that the strength of the immune response does not depend on the symptoms and the severity of the infection.

“However, our study does shows that antibody levels vary, sometimes markedly, depending on the test used. This means that caution is needed when comparing estimates of infection levels in a population obtained in different parts of the world with different tests and at different times.”

Professor Enrico Lavezzo, from the University of Padua, said: “The May testing demonstrated that 3.5 percent of the Vo’ population had been exposed to the virus, even though not all of these subjects were aware of their exposure given the large fraction of asymptomatic infections.

“However, at the follow-up, which was performed roughly nine months after the outbreak, we found that antibodies were less abundant, so we need to continue to monitor antibody persistence for longer time spans.”

The team also investigated the infection status of household members, to estimate how likely an infected member is to pass on the infection within the household. Their modelling suggests that there was a probability of about 1 in 4 that a person infected with SARS-CoV-2 passes the infection to a family member and that most transmission (79 percent) is caused by 20 percent of infections.

This finding confirms that there are large differences in the number of secondary cases generated by infected people, with the majority of infections generating no further infections and a minority of the infections generating a large number of infections.

The large differences in how one infected person may infect others in the population suggests that behavioural factors are key for epidemic control, and physical distancing, as well as limiting the number of contacts and mask wearing, continue to be important to reduce the risk of transmitting the disease, even in highly vaccinated populations.

The team’s dataset, which includes the results of the two mass PCR testing campaigns conducted in February and March and the antibody survey conducted in May and then again in November, also allowed them to tease apart the impact of various control measures.

They showed that, in the absence of case isolation and short lockdowns, manual contact tracing alone would not have been enough to suppress the epidemic.

Project lead Professor Andrea Crisanti, from the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial and the Department of Molecular Medicine at the University of Padua, said: “Our study also shows that manual contact tracing – the search for positive individuals on the basis of known and declared contacts – would have had a limited impact on the containment of the epidemic, had it not been accompanied by a mass screening.”

Dr Dorigatti added: “It is clear that the epidemic is not over, neither in Italy nor abroad. Moving forward, I think that it is of fundamental importance to continue administering first and second vaccine doses as well as to strengthen surveillance including contact tracing. Encouraging caution and limiting the risk of acquiring SARS-CoV-2 will continue to be essential.”

###

Media Contact
Hayley Dunning
[email protected]

Original Source

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/226713/covid19-antibodies-persist-least-nine-months/

Related Journal Article

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-24622-7

Tags: EpidemiologyImmunology/Allergies/AsthmaInfectious/Emerging DiseasesMedicine/HealthPublic Health
Share13Tweet8Share2ShareShareShare2

Related Posts

Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Hosts 2025 International Symposium on Advances in Mental Health Research

October 9, 2025

Accelerated Evolution Could Enable Bacteria to Establish Themselves in the Gut Microbiome, UCLA Researchers Reveal

October 9, 2025

Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Honors Five Top Psychiatric Researchers with 2025 Outstanding Achievement Prizes

October 9, 2025

Urological Models Verified with Human Penile Tissue Tests

October 9, 2025
Please login to join discussion

POPULAR NEWS

  • Sperm MicroRNAs: Crucial Mediators of Paternal Exercise Capacity Transmission

    1175 shares
    Share 469 Tweet 293
  • New Study Reveals the Science Behind Exercise and Weight Loss

    101 shares
    Share 40 Tweet 25
  • New Study Indicates Children’s Risk of Long COVID Could Double Following a Second Infection – The Lancet Infectious Diseases

    96 shares
    Share 38 Tweet 24
  • Ohio State Study Reveals Protein Quality Control Breakdown as Key Factor in Cancer Immunotherapy Failure

    82 shares
    Share 33 Tweet 21

About

We bring you the latest biotechnology news from best research centers and universities around the world. Check our website.

Follow us

Recent News

Brain & Behavior Research Foundation Hosts 2025 International Symposium on Advances in Mental Health Research

Scientists Develop Model to Advance Sustainable Design, Groundwater Management, and Nuclear Waste Storage

Optimizing Lithium Extraction from Oilfield Brine

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 63 other subscribers
  • Contact Us

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
No Result
View All Result
  • Homepages
    • Home Page 1
    • Home Page 2
  • News
  • National
  • Business
  • Health
  • Lifestyle
  • Science

Bioengineer.org © Copyright 2023 All Rights Reserved.