Thanks. I only had the test last month, because I was concerned about some unusual symptoms I had noticed many months earlier. But they were probably just due to disruption of routine, lack of usual exercise, etc.
The issue with antibodies is that the cells that produce them (B-cells) essentially work themselves to death producing antibodies. It’s extremely energy-intensive to produce them. If your body didn’t stop producing antibodies to the pathogens it’s exposed to after infection, you’d burn through so much energy you’d have nothing left for basic metabolic processes.
After an infection is beaten, 90% of the B-cells involved in antibody production die. About 10% go dormant and remain as Memory B-cells. Should that same pathogen be encountered again in the future, dendritic cells can trigger T-cells to wake those Memory B-cells and restart antibody production. As long as the pathogen hasn’t changed the surface structure that the antibodies bind to, they’ll still be effective. Based on our experience with SARS-CoV-1 (SARS2003) and MERS-CoV (MERS2012), antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 should be effective for at least 2-3 years.
Unfortunately, when we talk about testing, there’s just the PCR test which demonstrates the presence or absence of SARS-CoV-2 genetic material (typically indicating active infection or recently overcome infection) and serology (antibody) testing, which will detect the presence of antibodies, which are only present until the B-cells give up the ghost.