ReviewNature reviews. Immunology2022
Disentangling the relative importance of T cell responses in COVID-19: leading actors or supporting cast?
Review in Nature reviews. Immunology, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 90 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
90 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 142 citations in OpenAlex.
- Neutralising antibodies and protection from progression to severe COVID-19: A meta-analysis.PLoS medicine · 2026Pooled it
- Predicting vaccine effectiveness against severe COVID-19 over time and against variants: a meta-analysis.Nature communications · 2023Pooled it
- Vaccine-induced T cell responses correlate with reduced risk of severe COVID-19 in a placebo-controlled efficacy trial.EBioMedicine · 2025Trial
- Casirivimab + imdevimab accelerates symptom resolution linked to improved COVID-19 outcomes across susceptible antibody and risk profiles.Scientific reports · 2023Trial
- Article
- Article
- Immunological memory to vaccines.Immunity · 2026Review
- Article
- Humoral and cellular responses to SARS-CoV-2 variants after ancestral COVID-19 vaccines in people with HIV and lung transplant recipients.Clinical & translational immunology · 2026Article
- Detection of ongoing asymptomaticFrontiers in microbiology · 2026Article
- Conserved CD4 T-cell responses correlate with antibody neutralization in solid organ transplant recipients after bivalent SARS-CoV-2 vaccination.Frontiers in immunology · 2026Article
- Structural insights into clonal restriction and diversity in T cell recognition of two immunodominant SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid epitopes.Nature communications · 2025Article
- mRNA vaccine expressing enterovirus D68 virus-like particles induces potent neutralizing antibodies and protects against infection.Molecular therapy. Nucleic acids · 2025Article
- Pregnancy reduces COVID-19 vaccine immunity against novel variants.NPJ vaccines · 2025Article
- Changes in peripheral blood mononuclear cell electrical properties in response to viral exposure and vaccination.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Chimeric receptor-binding domain vaccine design and sequential immunization enhanced broadly neutralizing antibody responses against COVID-19.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- Poor vaccine responders mask the true trend in vaccine effectiveness against progression to severe disease.Vaccine · 2025Article
- Heterologous prime-boost vaccination with VLA2001 and an ORFV-based vector enhances spike- and nucleocapsid-specific immunity in mice.Frontiers in immunology · 2025Article
- An Update on Anti-COVID-19 Vaccines and the Challenges to Protect Against New SARS-CoV-2 Variants.Pathogens (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- Preclinical characterization of the Omicron XBB.1.5-adapted BNT162b2 COVID-19 vaccine.NPJ vaccines · 2024Article
30 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
11 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
The rapid development of multiple vaccines providing strong protection from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has been a major achievement. There is now compelling evidence for the role of neutralizing antibodies in protective immunity. T cells may play a role in resolution of primary SARS-CoV-2 infection, and there is a widely expressed view that T cell-mediated immunity also plays an important role in vaccine-mediated protection. Here we discuss the role of vaccine-induced T cells in two distinct stages of infection: firstly, in protection from acquisition of symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection following exposure; secondly, if infection does occur, the potential for T cells to reduce the risk of developing severe COVID-19. We describe several lines of evidence that argue against a direct impact of vaccine-induced memory T cells in preventing symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. However, the contribution of T cell immunity in reducing the severity of infection, particularly in infection with SARS-CoV-2 variants, remains to be determined. A detailed understanding of the role of T cells in COVID-19 is critical for next-generation vaccine design and development. Here we discuss the challenges in determining a causal relationship between vaccine-induced T cell immunity and protection from COVID-19 and propose an approach to gather the necessary evidence to clarify any role for vaccine-induced T cell memory in protection from severe COVID-19.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.