Neonatal and Children's Immune System and COVID-19: Biased Immune Tolerance versus Resistance Strategy

The recent outbreak of COVID-19 has emerged as a major global health concern. Although susceptible to infection, recent evidence indicates mostly asymptomatic or mild presentation of the disease in infants, children, and adolescents. Similar observations were made for acute respiratory infections caused by other coronaviruses (severe acute respiratory syndrome and Middle East respiratory syndrome). These observations suggest that the immune system behaves differently in children than adults. Recent developments in the field demonstrated fundamental differences in the neonatal immune system as compared with adults, whereby infants respond to microorganisms through biased immune tolerance rather than resistance strategies. Similarly, more frequent/recent vaccinations in children and younger populations may result in trained immunity. Therefore, the physiological abundance of certain immunosuppressive cells, a tightly regulated immune system, and/or exposure to attenuated vaccines may enhance trained immunity to limit excessive immune reaction to COVID-19 in the young.