A comparison study of SARS‐CoV‐2 IgG antibody between male and female COVID‐19 patients: A possible reason underlying different outcome between sex

  1. Fanfan Zeng
  2. Chan Dai
  3. Pengcheng Cai
  4. Jinbiao Wang
  5. Lei Xu
  6. Jianyu Li
  7. Guoyun Hu
  8. Zheng Wang
  9. Fang Zheng
  10. Lin Wang

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Abstract

The emergence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) in China at the end of 2019 has spread throughout the world and caused many thousands of deaths. The previous study reported a higher severe status rate and mortality rate in male patients in China. However, the reason underlying this difference has not been reported. The convalescent plasma containing a high level of SARS‐CoV‐2 immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody has been used in clinical therapy and achieved good effects in China. In this study, to compare the differences of the SARS‐CoV‐2 IgG antibody between male and female patients, a total number of 331 patients confirmed SARS‐CoV‐2 infection were enrolled. The serum of these patients was collected during hospitalization and detected for the SARS‐CoV‐2 IgG antibody. Our data showed that the concentration of IgG antibody in mild, general, and recovering patients showed no difference between male and female patients. In severe status, compared with male patients, there were more female patients having a relatively high concentration of serum SARS‐CoV‐2 IgG antibody. In addition, the generation of IgG antibody in female patients was stronger than male patients in disease early phase. Our study identified a discrepancy in the SARS‐CoV‐2 IgG antibody level in male and female patients, which may be a potential cause leading to a different outcome of Coronavirus Disease 2019 between sex.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.03.26.20040709: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Ethics approval: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of Wuhan Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology.
    Consent: All people enrolled in the study signed informed consent forms.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection: Serum sample were collected from healthy people and COVID-19 patients and used for SARS-CoV-2 antibody detection.
    SARS-CoV-2
    suggested: None
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistics: In this study, GraphPad 6.0 was applied for mapping and data statistical analysis.
    GraphPad
    suggested: (GraphPad Prism, RRID:SCR_002798)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    It should be noted that there were some limitations of this study. Firstly, as all the cases are collected in a signal hospital (Wuhan union hospital), the sample size was relatively small. Secondly, there were no critical cases enrolled in this study. Thirdly, probably due to limited sample size, the rate of severe cases for male and female patients did not showed a consistent tendency as previously reported. Nevertheless, the data showed in our study revealed a different pattern of IgG antibody after infection. In conclusion, in this study we detected and analyzed the SARS-CoV-2 IgG antibody of 331 patients and found that, compared with male patients, more female patients maintained a high level of IgG antibody after SARS-CoV-2 infection. And the production of IgG in female patients tended to be stronger than male patients in early phase of COVID-19. We propose here that our doctors and nurses should pay more attention to the patients whose IgG antibody were at low levels. And monitoring IgG antibody maybe a potential method to assess COVID-19 progression.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1002/jmv.25989
  3. Version published to 10.1101/2020.03.26.20040709v1 on medRxiv