Characterization of antibody response in asymptomatic and symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection

  1. Serena Marchi
  2. Simonetta Viviani
  3. Edmond J. Remarque
  4. Antonella Ruello
  5. Emilio Bombardieri
  6. Valentina Bollati
  7. Gregorio P. Milani
  8. Alessandro Manenti
  9. Giulia Lapini
  10. Annunziata Rebuffat
  11. Emanuele Montomoli
  12. Claudia M. Trombetta

Reviewed by

Read the full article See related articles

Discuss this preprint

Start a discussion What are Sciety discussions?

Listed in

Log in to save this article

Abstract

SARS-CoV-2 pandemic is causing high morbidity and mortality burden worldwide with unprecedented strain on health care systems. To investigate the time course of the antibody response in relation to the outcome we performed a study in hospitalized COVID-19 patients. As comparison we also investigated the time course of the antibody response in SARS-CoV-2 asymptomatic subjects. Study results show that patients produce a strong antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 with high correlation between different viral antigens (spike protein and nucleoprotein) and among antibody classes (IgA, IgG, and IgM and neutralizing antibodies). The antibody peak is reached by 3 weeks from hospital admission followed by a sharp decrease. No difference was observed in any parameter of the antibody classes, including neutralizing antibodies, between subjects who recovered or with fatal outcome. Only few asymptomatic subjects developed antibodies at detectable levels.

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0253977
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.03.29.21254534: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: This study was approved by the Ethics Committee of the University of Siena (approval number 17373, approval date June 1, 2020), by the Ethics Committee of Humanitas Gavazzeni (approval number 236, approval date September
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variableA total of 42 COVID-19 patients, hospitalized at Humanitas Gavazzeni (Bergamo, Italy), were retrospectively selected for this study, of whom 35 (22 males and 13 females) recovered and 7 (3 males and 4 females) had a fatal outcome.
    Cell Line Authenticationnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Experimental Models: Cell Lines
    SentencesResources
    After 1 hour of incubation at room temperature, 100µl of virus-serum mixture were added to a 96-well plate containing an 80% confluent Vero E6 cell monolayer.
    Vero E6
    suggested: RRID:CVCL_XD71)

    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:
    One limitation of this study is its retrospective nature and the collection of COVID-19 samples was carried out only in a single center. Besides this, we limited the collection to those patients for whom it was possible to construct an antibody response curve over a period of at least one month. This, of course, represents a bias, however, the ratio between deceased and recovered patients (7 out of 42), 16.6% falls in the range from 5.7% to 30.4% as described in the literature [34, 35]. This value shows high variability because it can be influenced both by the characteristics of the series studied and the different treatments. The findings from this study do not allow us to predict the kinetics of the antibody decay over time in patients who recovered from COVID-19, in particular, who will be susceptible to reinfection over time, since no follow-up samples after discharge were available. Overall, our data highlight that COVID-19 patients produce a simultaneous antibody response to SARS-CoV-2 with high correlation between different viral antigens (S1 and NP) and among antibody classes (IgA, IgG, and IgM and neutralizing antibodies). The peak is reached by 3 weeks from hospital admission followed by a sharp decrease. On the contrary, only few asymptomatic subjects developed antibodies at detectable levels, though significantly lower compared to COVID-19 patients. Since neutralizing antibodies were rarely produced, this finding raises the question about the protection of these s...

    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 10.1101/2021.03.29.21254534 on medRxiv