Thread by @profshanecrotty

I am a big fan of this COVID immunity paper from @Anto_Berto . This was the first paper to longitudinally track viral loads AND virus-specific T cells in COVID patients quantitatively in the same study, from early time points. 🧵

@bertoletti_lab

doi.org/10.1016/j.celr…

The key observations are:

* Early T cell responses were associated with rapid control of virus and mild disease.

* Early antibody responses did not distinguish control of virus or disease severity.

* Peak viral loads were correlated with disease severity.

I talk about the importance of longitudinal studies from early timepoints post-infection in this review.

doi.org/10.1016/j.cell…

Since immune responses (and viral replication) are exponential processes, it is hard to determine meaningful correlations between immune responses and viral control without time courses, starting from very early.

Because this study tracked T cell responses and viral loads together, from early times after infection, the interpretations are more likely to be correct than more commonly available studies with a single time point or much later timepoints.

The study also observed a relationship between peak viral load and duration of infection. That connects this study with the larger literature of studies that tracked viral loads and disease severity but not T cell responses.

This study only had 12 patients, so it will be important to have similar immunological studies from other labs, and other geographical locations and cohort characteristics (as acknowledged by the authors), but it is the first study of its kind and a valuable contribution.