The COVID-19 pandemic took our world by storm. COVID-19 affected hundreds of millions of people globally and was associated with tens of millions of deaths. Today, people are still dying globally from the coronavirus. Further, a significant number of individuals developed long COVID following COVID-19 infection. Long COVID may cause brain fog, chest pain, heart palpitations, gastrointestinal distress, a lasting loss of smell and taste, severe fatigue, difficulty exercising, sexual dysfunction, and dizziness (among others) lasting weeks, months, and even years.

While some individuals like me have contracted COVID-19 more than once (I just finished my 2nd stint in January), others have yet to contract the viral illness at all. Research performed by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, alongside a research team from three other esteemed institutions, suggest that COVID-19 avoidance could result from immune response.

Influential Immune Responses in COVID-19

Within the study, researchers sought to understand how the human body responds when exposed to SARS-CoV-2, the COVID-19-causing virus. To begin, the research team enrolled 36 healthy adults into the study. All of these individuals were COVID-naive. That is to say, nobody enrolled in the study had previously had or been diagnosed with COVID-19. Once in the study, the virus was administered intranasally. Findings from the study, which were published in Nature, show that:

• 100% of tracked individuals had an immediate immune response, including activating specialized mucosal immune cells and reducing levels of pro-inflammatory white blood cells. This was a previously unseen result in virology.
• Some individuals were exposed to the virus but did not contract COVID-19, known as an abortive infection. Essentially this means that the body stops the virus from spreading before it ever gets a chance to. In these individuals, high HLA-DQA2 gene expression stopped the virus from spreading.
• Other individuals did experience an infection (largely in the nose and nasal passages) while the body prevented its spread elsewhere. In these individuals, the immune system rapidly responded to infectious elements in the blood but not intranasally.

While these insights could be expanded upon, they share valuable information on potential treatment or research approaches for the future.