Persistent cellular immunity to SARS-CoV-2 infection
Gaëlle Breton, Pilar Mendoza, Thomas Hägglöf, Thiago Y. Oliveira, Dennis Schaefer-Babajew, Christian Gaebler, Martina Turroja, Arlene Hurley, Marina Caskey, Michel C. Nussenzweig
Abstract
SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for an ongoing pandemic that has affected millions of individuals around the globe. To gain further understanding of the immune response in recovered individuals, we measured T cell responses in paired samples obtained an average of 1.3 and 6.1 mo after infection from 41 individuals. The data indicate that recovered individuals show persistent polyfunctional SARS-CoV-2 antigen-specific memory that could contribute to rapid recall responses. Recovered individuals also show enduring alterations in relative overall numbers of CD4+ and CD8+ memory T cells, including expression of activation/exhaustion markers, and cell division.