Background
During the ongoing coronavirus disease COVID-19 pandemic, many individuals were infected with and have cleared the virus, developing virus-specific antibodies and effector/memory T cells. An important unanswered question is what levels of T cell and antibody responses are sufficient to protect from the infection.
Methods
In 5340 Moscow residents, we evaluated anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM/IgG titers and frequencies of the T cells specific to the membrane, nucleocapsid, and spike proteins of SARS-CoV-2, using IFNγ ELISpot assay. Additionally, we evaluated the fractions of virus-specific CD4+ and CD8+ T cells using intracellular staining of IFNγ and IL2 followed by flow cytometry. We analyzed the COVID-19 rates as a function of the assessed antibody and T cell responses, using the Kaplan-Meyer estimator method, for up to 300 days post-inclusion.
Results
We showed that T cell and antibody responses are closely interconnected and are commonly induced concurrently. Magnitudes of both responses inversely correlated with infection probability. Individuals positive for both responses demonstrated the highest levels of protectivity against the SARS-CoV-2 infection. A comparable level of protection was found in individuals with antibody response only, while the T cell response by itself granted only intermediate protection.
Conclusions
We found that the contribution of the virus-specific antibodies to protection against the SARS-CoV-2 infection is more pronounced than that of the T cells. The data on the virus-specific IgG titers may be instructive for making decisions in personalized health care and public anti-COVID-19 policies.
Ninety degree edge misfit dislocations (MDs) are «sessile» dislocations; such dislocations, however, were found in large amounts in relaxed films. The commonly accepted formation mechanism of such dislocations is an interaction of two complementary 60° dislocations with appropriate Burger’s vectors, for example: a/2[101−] + a/2 [011] = a/2 [110]. In the present study, four possible types of interaction were analyzed: (i) random meeting of two complementary MDs; (ii) crossing of two complementary 60° MDs in the vicinity of film-substrate interface in systems grown on substrates misoriented from exact (001) orientation; (iii) formation of edge MDs during cross-slipping of a secondary MD; and (iv) induced nucleation of a secondary complementary 60° MD. Examples of discussed interactions are given. Contrary to the widespread opinion that edge MDs in GeSi and InGaAs films grown by MBE on Si and GaAs substrates predominantly form under elastic strains greater than 2% and at the final stage of plastic relaxation, in the present study, we show that such dislocations may also form at an early stage of plastic relaxation in films with less-than-1% lattice misfit with substrate. A necessary condition for that is a sufficient amount of 60° dislocations available in the system by the moment the strained film starts growing. Dislocations (60°) can be introduced into the system using a preliminarily grown, partially or fully relaxed buffer layer. This layer serves as a source of threading dislocations for the next growing layer that favor the formation of paired complementary MDs and their «reagents», edge MDs, at the interface with growing film.
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