Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

Had COVID? You’ll probably make antibodies for a lifetime

People who recover from mild COVID-19 have bone-marrow cells that can churn out antibodies for decades, although viral variants could dampen some of the protection they offer.
  1. Ewen Callaway
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed  Google Scholar

Coloured transmission electron micrograph of a plasma cell from bone marrow

A bone-marrow plasma cell (artificially coloured). Such cells, which produce antibodies, linger for months in the bodies of people who have recovered from COVID-19.Credit: Dr Gopal Murti/Science Photo Library

Many people who have been infected with SARS-CoV-2 will probably make antibodies against the virus for most of their lives. So suggest researchers who have identified long-lived antibody-producing cells in the bone marrow of people who have recovered from COVID-191.

The study provides evidence that immunity triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection will be extraordinarily long-lasting. Adding to the good news, “the implications are that vaccines will have the same durable effect”, says Menno van Zelm, an immunologist at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia.

Antibodies — proteins that can recognize and help to inactivate viral particles — are a key immune defence. After a new infection, short-lived cells called plasmablasts are an early source of antibodies.

But these cells recede soon after a virus is cleared from the body, and other, longer-lasting cells make antibodies: memory B cells patrol the blood for reinfection, while bone marrow plasma cells (BMPCs) hide away in bones, trickling out antibodies for decades.

“A plasma cell is our life history, in terms of the pathogens we’ve been exposed to,” says Ali Ellebedy, a B-cell immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, who led the study, published in Nature on 24 May.

Access options

Rent or buy this article

Prices vary by article type

from$1.95

to$39.95

Learn more

Prices may be subject to local taxes which are calculated during checkout

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-01442-9

Updates & Corrections

  • Correction 27 May 2021: An earlier version of this article gave the wrong number of bone-marrow samples. This has now been corrected.

References

  1. Turner, J. S. et al. Nature https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03647-4 (2021).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Kaneko, N. et al. Cell 183, 143–157 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Long, Q.-X. et al. Nature Med. 26, 1200–1204 (2020).

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Ellebedy, A. et al. Preprint at Research Square https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-310773/v1 (2021).

Download references

Subjects

Latest on:

Nature Careers

Jobs

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing

Search

Advanced search

Quick links