American journal of respiratory cell and molecular biology
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Am. J. Respir. Cell Mol. Biol. · Nov 2021
Age-related Differences in the Nasal Mucosal Immune Response to SARS-CoV-2.
Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has infected more than 180 million people since the onset of the global pandemic. Despite similar viral load and infectivity rates between children and adults, children rarely develop severe illness. Differences in the host response to the virus at the primary infection site are among the mechanisms proposed to account for this disparity. ⋯ SARS-CoV-2-infected adults had increased expression of genes involved in neutrophil activation and T cell receptor signaling pathways compared to SARS-CoV-2-infected children, despite similar severity of illness and viral reads. Age-related differences in the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 may place adults at increased risk of developing severe illness. This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives License 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).