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Message: <blockquote data-quote="imhotep" data-source="post: 29620994" data-attributes="member: 562115">It was long believed that a newborn's immune system was an immature version of an adult's, but new research from Cornell University shows that newborns' T cells – white blood cells that protect from disease – outperform those of adults at fighting off numerous infections.But during the COVID-19 pandemic, many were surprised by the apparent lack of illness in infants, bringing this long-standing belief into question. This new study explains why.Adult T cells outperform newborn T cells at tasks including recognizing antigens, forming immunological memory and responding to repeat infections, which has led to the belief that infant's T cells were just a weaker version of the adult ones.Cornell team Brian Rudd, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, and Andrew Grimson, professor of molecular biology and genetics had now discovered that newborn T cells are not deficient: Instead, they are involved in a part of the immune system that does not require antigen recognition: the innate arm of the immune system. While adults T cells use adaptive immunity – recognizing specific germs to then fight them later – newborn T cells are activated by proteins associated with innate immunity, the part of the immune system that offers rapid but nonspecific protection against microbes the body has never encountered.This enables newborn T cells to do something that most adult T cells cannot: respond during the very first stages of an infection and defend against a wide variety of unknown bacteria, parasites and viruses."We know that neonatal T cells don't protect as well as adult T cells against repeat infections with the same pathogen. But neonatal T cells actually have an enhanced ability to protect the host against early stages of an initial infection," Rudd said. "So, it is not possible to say adult T cells are better than neonatal T cells or neonatal T cells are better than adult T cells. They just have different functions."</blockquote>

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