Do Childhood Colds Help the Body Respond to COVID-19?
Some people are better at fighting off seasonal flu when the strain of influenza virus is similar to the first one they encountered in childhood — a phenomenon evocatively dubbed ‘original antigenic sin’, or OAS. OAS was first characterized in 1960 by U.S. epidemiologist Thomas Francis Jr, who noticed that the immune system seemed to be permanently programmed to produce antibodies against the first strain of a flu virus that it encountered. Now, there is increasing evidence that people’s immune responses to COVID-19 could be shaped in a similar way by previous infections with common-cold coronaviruses. This article by Nature explains.