Rome, Italy:
Antibodies against coronavirus remained in the blood of patients with Covid-19 for at least eight months right after they had been infected, Italian researchers stated Tuesday.
They had been present “regardless of the severity of the illness, the age of the patients or the presence of other pathologies,” according to a statement from the San Raffaele hospital in Milan.
The researchers, working with Italy’s ISS national wellness institute, studied 162 patients with symptomatic coronavirus who turned up at the emergency area throughout the country’s initially wave of infections last year.
Blood samples had been taken in March and April and once again at the finish of November from these who survived. Some 29 patients died.
“The presence of neutralising antibodies, while reducing over time, was very persistent — eight months after diagnosis, there were only three patients who no longer showed positivity to the test,” stated the statement, issued jointly with the ISS.
The study, published in the Nature Communications scientific journal, also emphasised the significance of the improvement of antibodies in recovering from coronavirus.
“Those who failed to produce them within the first 15 days of infection are at greater risk of developing severe forms of Covid-19,” it stated.
Two thirds of the patients surveyed had been males, and the typical age was 63. Some 57 % of them had a pre-current pathology, notably hypertension and diabetes.