The ‘hook effect’ - the more antibodies the worse.
This may be a good place to remind everyone that too much of anything is never a good thing - and that this may especially be true with regards to neutralising antibodies.
To cut to the chase, having more neutralising antibodies can in fact impede viral clearance. Yes, you heard that right.
This phenomenon is called the “Hook” or “prozone” effect and describes a drop in antibody protection efficacy seen at very high antibody concentrations.
One way viruses are cleared in our body is through a process called phagocytosis, where certain white cells effectively eat the virus. However for this to happen antibodies need to bind to parts of the virus (spike protein in our case) and let the virus-eating white cells know that dinner is here and ready.
Only a small number of antibodies are needed to flag these viruses. In fact, a small number of high-quality antibodies is all you need for proper immune function and what you see in those with mild cases. It may be why children do better, along with better T cell responses and stronger innate immune systems.
Problems seem to occur in phagocytic systems when there are too many neutralising antibodies. Firstly, too many antibodies create competition within themselves to bind to certain areas of the virus, favouring other forms of binding and reducing the signal for phagocytosis.
Furthermore, at high antibody levels, the spike is covered irregularly and inappropriately by these antibodies and this causes interaction difficulties between the receptor on the phagocytic cell and the antigen.
In effect, high concentrations of neutralising antibodies coat the very thing we are trying to get rid of and help it evade our immune system.
Don’t take all of this from me but from a 2022 study titled “Spike-Dependent Opsonization Indicates Both Dose-Dependent Inhibition of Phagocytosis and That Non-Neutralizing Antibodies Can Confer Protection to SARS-CoV-2”
The researchers note using animal data that “too high doses of neutralizing antibodies are not beneficial in a treatment model and that non-neutralizing antibodies can offer protection to SARS-CoV-2 infection.”.
Yep, the long-ignored non-neutralising antibodies do play a major part in controlling the infection. Don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
I hope the study mentioned above gets more coverage because it highlights the important point of not always going for the highest titres of neutralising antibodies as a proxy for immunological success. It also highlights the importance of non-neutralising antibodies and neutralising antibody balance.
We know that those who are most unwell with COVID-19 have higher antibody titres and poorer antibody quality. And like many other biological systems, this in itself may have further perpetuated disease states.
Most importantly though, solely focusing on high antibody titres post-shot is how researchers and policymakers justified mass inoculation and boosters. And the spike protein was chosen for mRNA replication as it was touted as the only protein on the virus to sufficiently elicit "neutralising antibodies".
Now as we can see that more neutralising antibodies may actually be detrimental to our health, we have to question again why boosters are still encouraged? And why specifically the spike protein was chosen to replicate using DNA/mRNA technology?
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