Population homogeneity for the antibody response to COVID-19 BNT162b2/Comirnaty vaccine is only reached after the second dose across all adult age ranges

  1. João Faro-Viana
  2. Marie-Louise Bergman
  3. Lígia A. Gonçalves
  4. Nádia Duarte
  5. Teresa P. Coutinho
  6. Patrícia C. Borges
  7. Christian Diwo
  8. Rute Castro
  9. Paula Matoso
  10. Vanessa Malheiro
  11. Ana Brennand
  12. Lindsay Kosack
  13. Onome Akpogheneta
  14. João M. Figueira
  15. Conceição Cardoso
  16. Ana M. Casaca
  17. Paula M. Alves
  18. Telmo Nunes
  19. Carlos Penha-Gonçalves
  20. Jocelyne Demengeot

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Abstract

While mRNA vaccines are administrated worldwide in an effort to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, the heterogeneity of the humoral immune response they induce at the population scale remains unclear. Here, in a prospective, longitudinal, cohort-study, including 1245 hospital care workers and 146 nursing home residents scheduled for BNT162b2 vaccination, together covering adult ages from 19 to 99 years, we analyse seroconversion to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein and amount of spike-specific IgG, IgM and IgA before vaccination, and 3-5 weeks after each dose. We show that immunogenicity after a single vaccine dose is biased to IgG, heterogeneous and reduced with increasing age. The second vaccine dose normalizes IgG seroconversion in all age strata. These findings indicate two dose mRNA vaccines is required to reach population scale humoral immunity. The results advocate for the interval between the two doses not to be extended, and for serological monitoring of elderly and immunosuppressed vaccinees.

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  1. Version published to 10.1038/s41467-021-27761-z
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.19.21253680: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Recruitment and enrolment: This study was approved by the Ethics committee of the Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Ocidental in compliance with the Declaration of Helsinki and follows international and national guidelines for health data protection.
    Consent: All participants provided informed consent to take part in the study.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Briefly, coating was 0.5 µg/ml highly purified spike protein [11]; sera were diluted 1/50 in duplicate, 2nd antibodies were horseradish-peroxidase conjugated goat-anti human IgG, IgM, and IgA (Abcam), developed with TMB (BD OptEIA)
    human IgG
    suggested: None
    IgA
    suggested: None

    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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    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.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.03.19.21253680 on medRxiv