Collab post with the amazing Science Whiz Liz

ADE stands for Antibody Dependant Enhancement.

ADE occurs when the antibodies generated during an immune response recognize and bind to a disease causing pathogen, but instead of fighting it, the antibodies help it to get into cells easier and cause worse disease.

Typically, antibodies bind to the disease causing antigen and prevent it from infecting, or entering, a cell. Antibodies that prevent entry into cells are called neutralizing antibodies.

Rarely, the antibodies created are not effective neutralizing antibodies. This can sometimes result in the host’s antibodies being used as a Trojan horse to help the virus enter the cell. This can lead to both increased virus infectivity and virulence.

These antibodies could be created through a previous actual infection or via vaccines. Recently a publication came out showing some modeling data bringing up the hypothetical risk of ADE.

Important to remember a few key things about this paper:

1- This was a modeling study only and did not use animal models or humans.

2- It has not been replicated in any other animal or human trials or studies thus far. They looked for it in animal trials for all COVID-19 vaccines and they saw NO signs of ADE.In addition:

3- Enough people around the world have had the Covid-19 vaccines during massive Delta variant surges – we have not seen any indication of ADE occurring. When it occurs it is very obvious. We aren’t seeing it.

4- Within UK, Israel, USA and Canada, bulk of the hospitalized cases are in those who are unvaccinated.

5- If ADE was indeed a concern, we would have seen this occur with COVID-19 infections as well, but haven’t. Further important to remember that vaccines results in higher number of neutralizing antibodies that what is seen after infections with COVID-19.

Bottom-line: The ADE horse is dead. No trojans found.