Production of anti-PF4 antibodies in antiphospholipid antibody-positive patients is not affected by COVID-19 vaccination
This article has been Reviewed by the following groups
Listed in
- Evaluated articles (ScreenIT)
Abstract
Antibodies against cationic platelet chemokine, platelet factor 4 (PF4/CXCL4), have been described in heparin-induced thrombocytopenia (HIT), but also in patients positive for antiphospholipid antibodies (aPL) even in the absence of heparin treatment and HIT-related clinical manifestations. Anti-PF4 antibodies have been recently described also in subjects who developed thrombosis with thrombocytopenia syndrome (TTS) in association with adenoviral vector-based, but not with mRNA-based, COVID-19 vaccines.
Objective
To investigate whether COVID-19 vaccination affects the production of anti-PF4 antibodies in aPL-positive patients and in control groups.
Methods
Anti-PF4 immunoglobulins were detected in patients’ and controls’ serum samples by ELISA and their ability to activate normal platelets was assessed by the platelet aggregation test.
Results
Anti-PF4 were found in 9 of 126 aPL-positive patients, 4 of 50 patients with COVID-19, 9 of 49 with other infections, and 1 of 50 aPL-negative patients with systemic lupus erythematosus. Clinical manifestations of TTS were not observed in any aPL patient positive for anti-PF4, whose serum failed to cause platelet aggregation. The administration of COVID-19 vaccines did not affect the production of anti-PF4 immunoglobulins or their ability to cause platelet aggregation in 44 aPL-positive patients tested before and after vaccination.
Conclusions
Heparin treatment-independent anti-PF4 antibodies can be found in aPL-positive patients and asymptomatic carriers, but their presence, titre as well as in vitro effect on platelet activation are not affected by COVID-19 vaccination.
Article activity feed
-
-
SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.12.21261976: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: The Ethics Committee at Istituto Auxologico Italiano approved the study (08-01-2021).
Consent: All the patients/subjects gave their informed consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources Anti-PF4 antibodies are detectable in 1.0-4.3% of normal healthy subjects (NHS), depending on the commercial kit used. Anti-PF4suggested: NoneResults 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 …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.08.12.21261976: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: The Ethics Committee at Istituto Auxologico Italiano approved the study (08-01-2021).
Consent: All the patients/subjects gave their informed consent.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Antibodies Sentences Resources Anti-PF4 antibodies are detectable in 1.0-4.3% of normal healthy subjects (NHS), depending on the commercial kit used. Anti-PF4suggested: NoneResults 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.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
-
