Immunological memory diversity in the human upper airway.

ABSTRACT: The upper airway is an important site of infection, but immune memory in the human upper airway is poorly understood, with implications for COVID-19 and many other human diseases^1-4. Here we demonstrate that nasal and nasopharyngeal swabs can be used to obtain insights into these challenging problems, and define distinct immune cell populations, including antigen-specific memory B cells and T cells, in two adjacent anatomical sites in the upper airway. Upper airway immune cell populations seemed stable over time in healthy adults undergoing monthly swabs for more than 1 year, and prominent tissue resident memory T (T_RM) cell and B (B_RM) cell populations were defined. Unexpectedly, germinal centre cells were identified consistently in many nasopharyngeal swa

SUBMITTER: Ramirez SI 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11895801 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature