One for the science bods - antibody results

[ginnybag]

DD (10), DH and 1 are part of one of the studies going on.

We had antibody tests yesterday.

DH and I - antibody negative.

DD - antibody positive (and very strongly so).

Duplicated tests, so not false results.

Cue the researcher overseeing the tests lighting up like it was Christmas morning, and making grabby hands at the samples, which was genuinely fun to see. And a lot of discussion about 'how'.

I'm a chemist by training, and thoroughly appreciate an 'interesting' result, so I thought I'd share.

I’m breastfeeding DS. He’s negative, DH is negative, and I was positive. It made no sense at all because I haven’t been seperated for him for over a year - it was chalked up as a possibly erroneous outlier.

Surely there could be lots of plausible reasons for this though?

Just because one member of a household has the virus it's by no means guaranteed that other members will catch it. I'm sure I've read that it's about 50%.

Also, there's a reasonable chance that OP your DD is currently/recently infectious (without symptoms) and may still pass it to you and DH.

Breastfeeding babies get some immune system boost from their mother, and it also seems that the younger you are the less likely you are to catch it.

Or am I misunderstanding something...?

Not a scientist, but I constantly see comments being made about the fact that younger children don't seem to transmit in any meaningful numbers. So given the age of your DD could this just be evidence that it is possible for children to get the disease asymptomatically and for their immune systems to squash it rather than allow them to transmit?

Definitely not 'false' results. Definitely not currently infected. (Unless we've hit Lotto win levels of statistically unlikely in the number of 'false' test results on all three of us.)

There are a lot of possibilities, but that's what's interesting. It's not going to change any of us following the rules, and it's in the hands of the researchers what to make of it, but it's just a curious result.

DD is ten, so breastfeeding isn't relevant to her (anymore) - although it might explain the previous poster's baby. Also, it's DD that's antibody positive, so is the one we know has had it, so she reverses the 'younger you are' trend as well. DH and I have no way to know whether we have had it, and have lost antibody response since, or if we've never been infected at all.

If we haven't, then we hit the 'statistically unlikely' issue of how she hasn't given it to at least one of us. This is a very cuddly ten year old - there's a good hour or more a day where she's still sat on/sat next to one or both of us, and I still do her hair most days. I freely acknowledge this might be exactly what has happened, but it's an unusual result if it has.

If we have had it, then none of us have been ill at all since Jan, and the result is interesting for the fact that she's kept her antibodies and we haven't.

It's nerd-country, I know, but I like puzzles like this, and I thought it might be interesting if there's anyone else similar.

IrkedEssex - yes. That's one of the things we're wondering. It would be very good news if that could be a proven trend.