COVID-19 has been active and wreaking havoc around the world for over a year now. However, there is little knowledge about what happens when people who recovered from the infection are infected for the second time.
In a news release, the researchers from the University of Oxford announced their plans of launching a human challenge trial to look at what kind of immune response can protect recovered patients from getting reinfected. Their study will also look at the response of the immune system after getting reinfected with SARS-CoV-2.
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Looking for Brave Volunteers
The researchers for the human challenge trial are looking for 64 healthy volunteers who were once infected with COVID-19. They should be between the ages of 18 to 30 who will be purposely infected with a pathogen or bug to study the effects of that infection.
According to Bloomberg Quint, the participants will be studied under controlled, quarantined conditions for at least 17 days.
They will be infected with the original stain of SARS-CoV-2 from Wuhan, China, and will be followed for one year. The scientists are hoping to get initial results after several months to help vaccine developers look at the levels and types of immunity necessary to prevent reinfection.
Challenge trials that involve deliberate supervised infections allow scientists to scrutinize details of how a body fights the virus and how the virus infects the body.
"This study has the potential to transform our understanding by providing high-quality data," vaccine senior research advisor Shobana Balasingam of Wellcome Trust said.
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How Will the Study Be Conducted?
According to ScienceAlert, the human challenge trial's initial phase will look at the minimum dose that allows the virus to replicate without symptoms in half of the number of participants.
Those who will develop symptoms will be given Regeneron monoclonal antibody treatment and will only be discharged from the quarantine unit once they are no longer infected and not at risk of infecting other people.
Within 12 months of the study's duration, the scientists will conduct at least eight follow-up check-ups after being discharged.
The second phase of the study involves another group of volunteers who will all receive an established minimum dose. Researchers will test the baseline of immune response of volunteers before they infect them and then measure the amount of virus they can detect after the infection.
Then they will measure the immune response at several time points after being infected to understand the immune response of the body.
Oxford's human challenge trial comes as a hospital in London isolated healthy volunteers while exposing them to the virus. Infected volunteers who have been infected in a controlled way are monitored to track the progress of their illness and how medicines and vaccines could work against it.
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