Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2021 Jan 4;131(1):e143380.
doi: 10.1172/JCI143380.

Recent endemic coronavirus infection is associated with less-severe COVID-19

Manish Sagar  1 , Katherine Reifler  1 , Michael Rossi  1 , Nancy S Miller  2 , Pranay Sinha  1 , Laura F White  3 , Joseph P Mizgerd  1
Affiliations

Recent endemic coronavirus infection is associated with less-severe COVID-19

Manish Sagar et al. J Clin Invest. .

Abstract

Four different endemic coronaviruses (eCoVs) are etiologic agents for the seasonal common cold, and these eCoVs share extensive sequence homology with human SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). Here, we show that individuals with, as compared with those without, a recent documented infection with eCoV were tested at greater frequency for respiratory infections but had a similar rate of SARS-CoV-2 acquisition. Importantly, the patients with a previously detected eCoV had less-severe coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) illness. Our observations suggest that preexisting immune responses against endemic human coronaviruses can mitigate disease manifestations from SARS-CoV-2 infection.

Keywords: Adaptive immunity; COVID-19; Cellular immune response.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Conflict of interest: The authors have declared that no conflict of interest exists.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Testing among patients with and without a documented eCoV.
Days between the last available CRP-PCR and first SARS-CoV-2 RT-PCR test (A) and number of independent CRP-PCR tests from May 18, 2015, to March 11, 2020 (B) among eCoV– and eCoV+ patients. The numbers of patients (No.) contributing to the data are indicated. The black lines in the dot plots represent median and IQR. **P < 0.01, *** P < 0.001, Mann-Whitney U test.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Mortality among patients with and without a documented eCoV.
Unadjusted Kaplan-Meier survival curve for eCoV– and eCoV+ SARS-CoV-2–infected hospitalized patients. The y axis shows the probability of survival, and the x axis shows days after first SARS-CoV-2–positive RT-PCR result. The tick marks denote right censoring after July 14, 2020. The number of patients at risk at different time points is shown. Unadjusted (0.3, 95% CI 0.1–0.7) and adjusted (0.3, 95% CI 0.0–2.0) survival HRs were calculated using the log rank test and Cox’s proportional hazard model, respectively.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment in

  • Does common cold coronavirus infection protect against severe SARS-CoV2 disease? doi: 10.1172/JCI144807

References

    1. Sariol A, Perlman S. Lessons for COVID-19 immunity from other coronavirus infections. Immunity. 2020;53(2):248–263. doi: 10.1016/j.immuni.2020.07.005. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Jain S, et al. Community-acquired pneumonia requiring hospitalization among U.S. adults. N Engl J Med. 2015;373(5):415–427. doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1500245. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Wu JT, et al. Estimating clinical severity of COVID-19 from the transmission dynamics in Wuhan, China. Nat Med. 2020;26(4):506–510. doi: 10.1038/s41591-020-0822-7. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Oran DP, Topol EJ. Prevalence of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection : a narrative review. Ann Intern Med. 2020;173(5):362–367. doi: 10.7326/M20-3012. - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Le Bert N, et al. SARS-CoV-2-specific T cell immunity in cases of COVID-19 and SARS, and uninfected controls. Nature. 2020;584(7821):457–462. doi: 10.1038/s41586-020-2550-z. - DOI - PubMed

Publication types

Substances