Association of E484K Spike Protein Mutation With Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) Infection in Vaccinated Persons: Maryland, January–May 2021

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Abstract

Among 9048 people infected with SARS-CoV-2 between January and May 2021 in Maryland, in regression-adjusted analysis, SARS-CoV-2 viruses carrying the spike protein mutation E484K were disproportionately prevalent among persons infected after full vaccination against COVID-19 compared with infected persons who were not fully vaccinated (aOR, 1.96; 95% CI: 1.36–2.83).

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.29.21261006: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsConsent: Ethical approval was waived and informed consent was not required.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    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:
    This analysis has a number of limitations. 1) This study, which included only vaccinated persons, does not directly estimate vaccine effectiveness; that would require a comparison of the rate of infection between vaccinated and unvaccinated people. 2) The population of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 in this study may not be representative of the population of people infected with SARS-CoV-2 in Maryland during the same period. Only some laboratories either conduct sequencing or make specimens available to the Maryland Department of Health laboratory for sequencing; populations tested by other laboratories would not be represented in this analysis. Further, infections in vaccinated persons were preferentially selected for sequencing by Maryland’s public health lab. 3) This study examined two specific SARS-CoV-2 spike protein mutations. SARS-CoV-2 mutations are not randomly assorted; if there is some other spike protein mutation that commonly co-occurs with E484K or L452R in Maryland, that mutation could actually be responsible for the associations observed here. 4) Data on patients’ underlying health conditions were not available. 5) In analyses of hospitalization, the outcome was hospitalization within 28 days of infection. The cause of hospitalization was not available; some hospitalizations may not have been caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection. This analysis is the first to examine the association of the E484K and L452R substitutions with SARS-CoV-2 infection and subsequent hosp...

    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.

    Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.


    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.