The Good Part About 'Waning' Immunity - The Atlantic

[SoonerPride]

Pretty interesting discussion about "waning" immunity.

You might have fewer antibodies now. But they’re better than the ones you started with.

The focus on antibody counts alone actually does a disservice to our understanding of immunity, experts told me. Like a block of wood being hewn into a sharper blade, vaccinated immune systems can hone their skills over time. Part of waning certainly does mean fewer. But it can also mean better.

So while the subpar antibodies are duking it out on the front lines, the immune system will shuttle a contingent of young B cells into a boot camp, called a germinal center, where they can study up on the coronavirus. What happens inside these training camps is a battle royal in miniature: The cells crowd together and desperately vie for access to the resources they need to survive. Their weapons are their antibodies, which they wave frantically about, trying to latch on to chunks of dead coronavirus, while a panel of other immune cells judges them from afar. Only the most battle-ready among them—the ones whose antibodies grip most tightly onto the coronavirus—move on to the next round, and the losers perish in defeat. As Gommerman put it, “If they suck, they die.”

There’s another way to think about the post-vaccination dip in antibodies: taking out the trash. Early-acting B cells are, in some cases, so crummy that they’re not all that worth keeping around. Evolution, too, has clued into the perks of this pattern, which might be why the B-cell victors aren’t just higher quality, but also much longer-lived. Whereas the first B cells that rally after vaccination might live just a few days, the cohort that trounced their peers in training can post up in the bone marrow or the blood for months or years. Some will continue to squeeze out antibodies for the long term, while others drift about in quietude, ready to resume their defensive duties when they’re called upon again. “What is seen as a ‘loss’ in antibodies is actually the slow waning of the less-good, short-lived response,” Victora told me. And when antibodies are needed—say, when the actual virus infects us—veteran B cells will produce them again, in gargantuan quantities. Antibodies themselves don’t always linger. But the capacity to create them usually does.

much more at the linky dink

[link:https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/10/waning-immunity-not-all-bad/620436/]