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LA JOLLA, CA Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, most people in the United States already had been sick with a coronavirus, albeit a far less dangerous one. That s because at least four coronaviruses in the same general family as SARS-CoV-2 cause the benign yet annoying illness known as the common cold.
In a new study that appears in
Nature Communications, scientists from Scripps Research investigated how the immune system s previous exposure to cold-causing coronaviruses impact immune response to COVID-19. In doing so, they discovered one cross-reactive coronavirus antibody that s triggered during a COVID-19 infection.
The findings will help in the pursuit of a vaccine or antibody treatment that works against most or all coronaviruses, says senior author Raiees Andrabi, PhD, an investigator in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology.