Children's susceptibility to seasonal viruses may provide them protection against Covid -19: Yale Study

Till now if you have been worried about your kid catching viral flu in changing weather, now you can be at a little ease with it as a study by Yale University has found that it may actually provide them a shield against severe COVID-19.

Image source: Medical News Today

Study Abroad: Yale researchers found in a study that kids who are more susceptible to common colds than adults might be more protected from severe COVID-19 due to this reason. Their research suggests that the presence and preponderance of respiratory bacteria and viruses in kids' noses is linked with better nasal immune responses which makes them less likely to develop severe symptoms of COVID-19.

Ellen Foxman, associate professor of laboratory medicine and immunobiology at Yale School of Medicine and senior author of the study said, “The prior studies showed that there was something different about kids in terms of having better defenses at the barrier where the virus tries to penetrate the body. But the unanswered question was, why do kids have better defenses?”

“We also found that heightened innate immune defenses directly correlated with the type and amount of microbes in the nose. So for kids that had viruses in their noses, the antiviral defenses were heightened. And the more virus they had in their noses, the higher those antiviral defenses were," added Foxman.

Study unveils reason why kids were less affected by severe Covid-19

During the Covid-19 pandemic, it was seen that the children remained more immune to the deadly virus, and even if they came in contact with it, they developed much fewer symptoms than the adults.

To find out the reason behind the heightened nasal immunity in children, the researchers gathered samples of 600 nasal swabs of children with or without respiratory symptoms in 2021 and 2022. These samples were frozen and are now used in the study. The swabs were tested for three types of bacteria and 15 additional respiratory viruses which can cause respiratory illness. They also tested the samples for proteins that result in innate immune activation.

"Overall, the findings showed that increased nasal innate immune defences in children were a reaction to the viruses and bacteria present," said Foxman.

Timothy Watkins, a graduate student in Foxman’s lab and the lead author of the study said, “Our results show that children are getting mild or sometimes asymptomatic infections quite often, leading to heightened barrier defences.”

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