Children are less affected by corona: New cells in the nose play a central role, study shows.
It turns out that children have a special protective mechanism in their noses that prevents them from being as severely affected by corona as expected. According to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Medicine, this is due to the active epithelial cells in children’s noses, which are crucial in preventing children from becoming seriously ill from the virus.
Children are often mildly sick and run around with runny noses, a condition that several studies now point to as the reason they have an easier time with corona. This was not expected by experts when the pandemic broke out in 2020. TV 2 has reported on these findings, which support the theory that constant exposure to minor infections strengthens children’s defenses against serious illnesses.
Allan Randrup Thomsen, professor of experimental virology at the University of Copenhagen, describes the nasal cells as children’s “first line of defense.” He explains to TV 2: “This fits well with the image we have of children, who are almost always snotty at a certain age. It means that the next infection cannot really get a grip on the mucous membranes and become serious because the children have an aggressive and already activated defense.”
These new scientific discoveries provide an explanation for why children have generally had milder courses of illness during the corona pandemic compared to other age groups.