Research identifies antigen-specific peripheral T follicular helper cells in COVID-19 infected patients

Research identifies antigen-specific peripheral T follicular helper cells in COVID-19 infected patients

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By Lakshmi Supriya, PhD.Oct 14 2020

Researchers have found peripheral T follicular helper cell responses to different structural proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and have studied how the response occurs over time.

Several studies of the SARS-CoV-2 virus infection, causing COVID-19, have reported how the human immune system responds to the infection. Many reports have found T-cell responses to the infection in almost all of the recovered patients.

Many of the current vaccine trials are using the presence of neutralizing antibodies as a measure of how efficient the vaccine is. Studies have found a correlation between neutralizing antibodies and protection from infection in non-human primates. Thus, understanding how T cells contribute to the formation of these antibodies is important.

However, it is challenging to direct study lymph tissues in humans, so peripheral T follicular cells (pTfh), or T follicular helper cells (Tfh) found in the blood, can help understand T cell responses.

There are only a few studies of pTfh for SARS-CoV-2. One study reported that the frequencies of pTfh increased in cases with severe infection. Upon testing deceased COVID-19 patients, another study found that Tfh response may be diminished in acute infections.

Although another study has shown a relation between SARS-CoV-2 spike protein-specific Tfh response and neutralizing antibodies, there are still many questions, such as if these responses contribute to the formation of antibodies and when after the infection these responses occur.