Analysis of humoral immunity against emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants: a population-based prevalence study in Yokohama, Japan

  1. Atsushi Goto
  2. Kei Miyakawa
  3. Izumi Nakayama
  4. Susumu Yagome
  5. Juan Xu
  6. Makoto Kaneko
  7. Norihisa Ohtake
  8. Hideaki Kato
  9. Akihide Ryo

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Abstract

Background

Little is known about the population prevalence of antibodies against emerging immune escape variants of SARS-CoV-2.

Methods

A population-based prevalence study was conducted in Yokohama City, the most populous municipality of Japan. Quantitative measurements of immunoglobulin G against SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (SP-IgG) and qualitative measurements of neutralization antibodies against the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants were performed.

Results

Of 6,000 randomly selected residents aged 20–74, 1,277 participated in the study during a period from January 30 to February 28, 2022. Of them, 3% had prior diagnosis of COVID-19, 96% received at least two-doses of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, and 94% were positive for SP-IgG. The positive rates of neutralizing antibodies were 28% to Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants in a random sample of 10% of participants (n=123) and 100% to BA.1 and BA.2 among participants who received the third vaccination at least 7 days before (n=66).

Conclusions

In this population-based prevalence study in Japan, most had SP-IgG antibodies but the overall neutralizing antibody positive rate was 28% against the Omicron BA.1 and BA.2 variants. The population-level insufficient humoral immunity against the Omicron variants may explain the outbreak of COVID-19 during this period in Japan.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2022.03.26.22272766: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    NIH rigor criteria are not applicable to paper type.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    Following prior publications [14–18], IgG antibodies against spike protein (SP-IgG) or total Ig antibodies against nucleocapsid protein (NP-total Ig) were measured using the commercial chemiluminescent enzyme immunoassay (AIA-CL SARS-CoV-2 SP-IgG and NP-total Ig antibody detection reagents, Tosoh, Japan) to assess prior infection (NP-total Ig) or vaccination against SARS-CoV-2 (SP-IgG or NP-total Ig).
    Ig
    suggested: None
    NP-total Ig
    suggested: None
    SARS-CoV-2 (SP-IgG
    suggested: None
    NP-total Ig).
    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: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    However, the present study has several limitations. First, the cross-sectional nature of the study limits the ability to investigate causality between measured variables. However, given the growing evidence regarding the effectiveness of vaccination on the immunity against and risk of contracting COVID-19, our findings provide an accurate description of the humoral immunity against variants, including assessments of the emerging variants such as Omicron BA.1 and BA.2. Second, the assay used to assess the positivity of the neutralization antibodies was qualitative. That is, we could only evaluate the presence or absence of the neutralization antibodies at a certain threshold, equivalent to the neutralizing titer of 51 or more in the HIV-based pseudovirus method [15]. However, our findings are consisitent with published studies using the quantitative assessments of the neutralization antibodies[23, 24]. Third, the response rate of our study was approximately 21%, which is not sufficiently high. However, to adjust the differences in age and sex distribution between our study and the overall population of Yokohama City, weighted prevalence rates were estimated and the results were almost identical. Lastly, our study provides evidence regarding a certain period of time in Yokohama City, Japan, and the generalizability may be limited. However, because the vaccination has been similarly provided to the nationwide population in Japan and the vaccination rates in Japan are similar to ...

    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.

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  2. Version published to 10.1101/2022.03.26.22272766v1 on medRxiv