PT  - JOURNAL ARTICLE
AU  - Gaëlle Breton
AU  - Pilar Mendoza
AU  - Thomas Hagglof
AU  - Thiago Y. Oliveira
AU  - Dennis Schaefer-Babajew
AU  - Christian Gaebler
AU  - Martina Turroja
AU  - Arlene Hurley
AU  - Marina Caskey
AU  - Michel C. Nussenzweig
TI  - Persistent Cellular Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 Infection
AID  - 10.1101/2020.12.08.416636
DP  - 2020 Jan 01
TA  - bioRxiv
PG  - 2020.12.08.416636
4099  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/09/2020.12.08.416636.short
4100  - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2020/12/09/2020.12.08.416636.full
AB  - SARS-CoV-2 is responsible for an ongoing pandemic that affected millions of individuals around the globe. To gain further understanding of the immune response in recovered individuals we measured T cell responses in paired samples obtained an average of 1.3 and 6.1 months after infection from 41 individuals. The data indicate that recovered individuals show persistent polyfunctional SARS-CoV-2 antigen specific memory that could contribute to rapid recall responses. In addition, recovered individuals show enduring immune alterations in relative numbers of CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, expression of activation/exhaustion markers, and cell division.Summary We show that SARS-CoV-2 infection elicits broadly reactive and highly functional memory T cell responses that persist 6 months after infection. In addition, recovered individuals show enduring immune alterations in CD4+ and CD8+ T cells compartments.Competing Interest StatementThe authors have declared no competing interest.