Antibody study: Coronavirus convalescents show long-term immunity

A study carried out at the Innsbruck University Clinic comes to the conclusion that those who have recovered from the coronavirus have stable long-term immunity. The results are consistent with international findings.

Furthermore, there is no need to worry about another coronavirus infection, mutations or transmission by the immune system, said study director Florian Deisenhammer on Tuesday in an interview with the Austrian news agency APA.

This has consequences for practice, for example when working in exposed areas or when vaccinating. The study was initiated by the neurology laboratory and carried out in cooperation with the University Clinic for Psychiatry II and the Institute for Virology. “The 29 study participants were on average 44 years old and all of them had Covid-19 in March,” said Deisenhammer, head of the neuroimmunology group at the Medical University of Innsbruck, describing the study population. Even if the results coincide with several international studies, further larger studies would be necessary to further solidify the findings, the neuroimmunologist admitted.

In all participants, antibodies could be detected at all times, and after six months also the neutralizing antibodies that are so important for the immune response, which speaks for a “constant, stable and targeted long-term immunity”. “All elements of a protective immunity” are available, Deisenhammer reported.

Deisenhammer reported that the results of the Innsbruck antibody study are largely in line with international study findings, in the course of which large populations were often examined. Investigations in Iceland and New York, in which cases were followed up for up to five months, would come to the same conclusion. A very recent publication from China also demonstrated stable immunity six to seven months after a Covid-19 infection. In Austria, a study by Danube Private University Krems with participants from Weissenkirchen (Krems district) came to practically identical results.

According to Deisenhammer, those who have recovered do not have to worry about a new disease with the Covid-19 virus. “The exceptions confirm the rule, but the exceptions are not the rule,” he stated, but the media would nevertheless emphasize the exceptions, the “regular” does not appear often enough. There is no reason to question immunity. All known to him recently sick with Covid-19 it was a reactivation of the coronavirus and therefore not a real new disease, it said.

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