{"doi":"10.1101/2020.08.11.20171843","title":"Functional SARS-CoV-2-specific immune memory persists after mild COVID-19","abstract":"The recently emerged SARS-CoV-2 virus is currently causing a global pandemic and cases continue to rise. The majority of infected individuals experience mildly symptomatic coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), but it is unknown whether this can induce persistent immune memory that might contribute to herd immunity. Thus, we performed a longitudinal assessment of individuals recovered from mildly symptomatic COVID-19 to determine if they develop and sustain immunological memory against the virus. We found that recovered individuals developed SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG antibody and neutralizing plasma, as well as virus-specific memory B and T cells that not only persisted, but in some cases increased numerically over three months following symptom onset. Furthermore, the SARS-CoV-2-specific memory lymphocytes exhibited characteristics associated with potent antiviral immunity: memory T cells secreted IFN-γ and expanded upon antigen re-encounter, while memory B cells expressed receptors capable of neutralizing virus when expressed as antibodies. These findings demonstrate that mild COVID-19 elicits memory lymphocytes that persist and display functional hallmarks associated with antiviral protective immunity.","journal":"medRxiv","year":2020,"id":118331,"datarank":0.7064295301968502,"base_score":4.709530201312334,"endowment":4.709530201312334,"self_citation_contribution":0.7064295301968502,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.7064295301968502,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":110,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9537,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2020-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":108897,"name":"Jason Netland","orcid":"0000-0003-1173-1709","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108898,"name":"Laila Shehata","orcid":"0000-0001-5037-9731","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":108899,"name":"Kurt B. 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