Homologous and heterologous antibodies to coronavirus 229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1, SARS, MERS and SARS-CoV-2 antigens in an age stratified cross-sectional serosurvey in a large tertiary hospital in The Netherlands

  1. Brenda M. Westerhuis
  2. Erwin de Bruin
  3. Felicity D. Chandler
  4. Chris R. B. Ramakers
  5. Nisreen M.A. Okba
  6. Wentao Li
  7. Herman Goossens
  8. Menno D. de Jong
  9. Berend Jan Bosch
  10. Bart L. Haagmans
  11. Pieter L. A. Fraaij
  12. Reina S. Sikkema
  13. Marion P.G. Koopmans

Reviewed by

Read the full article

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

Understanding the coronavirus (CoV) antibody landscape in relation to disease and susceptibility is critical for modelling of steps in the next phase during the current covid-19 pandemic. In March 2020, during the first month of the epidemic in The Netherlands, we performed cross sectional studies at two time points amongst patients of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam, to assess the presence of antibodies against seasonal human coronaviruses (OC43, 229E, NL63, HKU1), emerging zoonotic coronaviruses (SARS, MERS) and SARS-CoV-2 in nine different age groups. We observed minimal SARS-CoV-2 reactivity early March (0.7% of sera), increasing to 3.0%, four weeks later, suggesting probably undetected cases during this early phase of the epidemic. Antibody responses were mostly coronavirus species specific at young age, but possible cross-reactivity between human seasonal CoVs was observed with increasing age.

Article activity feed

  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.08.21.20177857: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: The study was approved by the institutions medical ethical board and informed consent was waived as data were collected anonymized (MEC-2020–0158).
    RandomizationIn addition, 18–20 randomly selected serum samples per age group were tested in six dilutions to obtain full antibody titers to allow correlation plots.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    Recombinant spike proteins of the S1 subunit (all coronavirus subtypes) or the S ectodomain (all except 229E) were expressed in HEK293 cells as described before (1, 18).
    HEK293
    suggested: CLS Cat# 300192/p777_HEK293, RRID:CVCL_0045)
    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Titer values were calculated by curve fitting using variable slope, minimal fluorescence of 1000 and maximum fluorescence of 65535, as done before using Graphpad Prism (9).
    Graphpad Prism
    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: 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.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.08.21.20177857 on medRxiv