Why infants don’t seem to get as sick with COVID-19

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Infants may hold the key to COVID-19 immunity By Alice Park Senior Health Correspondent One of the many mysteries of COVID-19 is why infants, seemingly the most vulnerable to viruses and other pathogens, don’t get as seriously ill from the infection as adults. Hospitalizations for babies remains the lowest when compared to other age groups, so researchers led by a team at Stanford studied how infants respond to SARS-CoV-2 before, during, and after infection. They found some interesting differences in the immune responses of the babies that could lead to better ways of generating immunity, through vaccines and treatments, in the future. Here’s what they reported in a study published in the journal Cell: Babies, especially infants only a few months old, can produce antibodies to the COVID-19 virus that last for nearly a year. Infants don’t develop severe inflammatory reactions in the blood like adults do. Instead, infants have strong inflammatory reactions in the mucosal tissues in the nose and upper respiratory tract, which suggests that they can keep the infection confined to those regions and “nip it in the bud” before it becomes a more system-wide infection in the blood, says one of the study’s authors. READ MORE Share This Story

What Else to Read Rite Aid Files For Bankruptcy While Dealing With Opioid-Related Lawsuits By TOM MURPHY and ELAINE KURTENBACH / AP The pharmacy giant Rite Aid has filed for bankruptcy as it tries to restructure while dealing with losses and opioid-related lawsuits. Read More » Sleep-Training My Baby in Israel Through the War By Danya Kaufmann "These days, my primary focus is protecting my baby. But really, he's been protecting me." Read More » How to Find a Therapist Who’s Right for You By Angela Haupt Here's what to consider before your first session. Read More » How People With Diabetes Can Lower Stroke Risk By Elizabeth Millard People with diabetes have more cardiovascular issues, but these problems aren't inevitable. Read More » Sleeping Well Can Keep Your Heart Healthy By Tara Law New research finds that sleep plays an important role in protecting against cardiovascular problems like stroke. Read More »

ONE LAST READ A movement to end racial categories Globally, humans share 99.9% of the same DNA, making race a biologically meaningless concept. Now, as Sydney Trent writes in the Washington Post, scientists are pushing to end the categorization of people by race, including in the U.S. Census. Read More »

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