this short article has some quite good comments below it, mentioning t-cells
" For the record, not a single vaccine has ever been approved based on a T-cell mediated immune readout, even when that is the mechanism by which the vaccine is known to work. Instead, people go out of their way to find vaccine generated antibodies against some part of the pathogen or its secreted products that happen to correlate well with the protective T cell response, but do not themselves play a major role in protection. "
" T-cells and Antibodies – it’s a perpetual question. There’s no question that (CD8+, MHC Class-I restricted) T-cells provide long-lasting (10s of years) protection against viral disease; EBV may be the classic example "
" Yes the cellular immune response could dominate but I don’t know of any viral disease that is so completely controlled by cellular immunity that people totally fail to make antibodies. The relative contribution of the two arms can be debated but cellular immunity to a respiratory virus in the complete absence of any humoral immunity? I can’t think of any examples. "
" For the record, not a single vaccine has ever been approved based on a T-cell mediated immune readout, even when that is the mechanism by which the vaccine is known to work. Instead, people go out of their way to find vaccine generated antibodies against some part of the pathogen or its secreted products that happen to correlate well with the protective T cell response, but do not themselves play a major role in protection. "
" T-cells and Antibodies – it’s a perpetual question. There’s no question that (CD8+, MHC Class-I restricted) T-cells provide long-lasting (10s of years) protection against viral disease; EBV may be the classic example "
" Yes the cellular immune response could dominate but I don’t know of any viral disease that is so completely controlled by cellular immunity that people totally fail to make antibodies. The relative contribution of the two arms can be debated but cellular immunity to a respiratory virus in the complete absence of any humoral immunity? I can’t think of any examples. "
More on T Cells, Antibody Levels, and Our Ignorance
I wrote here about the reports of rather short antibody persistence in recovering coronavirus patients, and what's been coming out in the two weeks since then has only made this issue more important. In that post, I was emphasizing that although we can measure antibody levels, we don't know how well
blogs.sciencemag.org