A multiplex serological assay for the characterization of IgG immune response to SARS-CoV-2

  1. Etienne Brochot
  2. Vianney Souplet
  3. Pauline Follet
  4. Pauline Ponthieu
  5. Christophe Olivier
  6. Gaël Even
  7. Christophe Audebert
  8. Rémi Malbec

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Abstract

In the fight against SARS-COV-2, the development of serological assays based on different antigenic domains represent a versatile tool to get a comprehensive picture of the immune response or differentiate infection from vaccination beyond simple diagnosis. Here we use a combination of the Nucleoprotein (NP), the Spike 1 (S1) and Spike 2 (S2) subunits, and the receptor binding domain (RBD) and N-terminal domain (NTD) of the Spike antigens from the CoViDiag ® multiplex IgG assay, to follow the immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection over a long time period and depending on disease severity. Using a panel of 209 sera collected from 61 patients up to eight months after infection, we observed that most patients develop an immune response against multiple viral epitope, but anti-S2 antibodies seemed to last longer. For all the tested IgGs, we have found higher responses for hospitalized patients than for non-hospitalized ones. Moreover the combination of the five different IgG responses increased the correlation to the neutralizing antibody titers than if considered individually. Multiplex immunoassays have the potential to improve diagnostic performances, especially for ancient infection or mild form of the disease presenting weaker antibody responses. Also the combined detection of anti-NP and anti-Spike-derived domains can be useful to differentiate vaccination from viral infection and accurately assess the antibody potential to neutralize the virus.

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  1. Version published to 10.1371/journal.pone.0262311
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.09.23.21262329: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: The study was approved by the institutional review board of the Amiens University Medical Center (number PI2020_843_0046, 21 April 2020).
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Antibodies
    SentencesResources
    However when NP and S2 antibodies are concomitantly present, the cut-off is adjusted to 20 MSI.
    S2
    suggested: None
    For S1, RBD, and NTD antibodies a cut-off of 10 MSI is applied for SARS-CoV-2 positivity.
    NTD
    suggested: (Cell Signaling Technology Cat# 14958, RRID:AB_2687876)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    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.

    About SciScore

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.09.23.21262329v1 on medRxiv