A novel assessment method for COVID-19 humoral immunity duration using serial measurements in naturally infected and vaccinated subjects

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Abstract

Collecting information on sustainability of immune responses after infection or vaccination is crucial to inform medical decision-making and vaccination strategies. Data on how long-lasting antibodies against SARS-COV-2 could provide a humoral and protective immunity and prevent reinfection with SARS-CoV-2 or its variants is particularly valuable. This study presents a novel method to quantitatively measure and monitor the diversity of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibody profiles over time.

Methods

Serum samples from two groups were used in this study: Samples from 20 naturally infected subjects (followed for up to 1 year) and samples from 83 subjects vaccinated with one or two doses of the Pfizer BioNtech vaccine (BNT162b2/BNT162b2) (followed for up to 6 months). The Multi-SARS-CoV-2 assay, a multiparameter serology test developed for the serological confirmation of past-infections, was used to determine the reactivity of six different SARS-CoV-2 antigens. For each subject sample, 3 dilutions (1/50, 1/400 and 1/3200) were defined as an optimal set over the six antigens and their respective linear ranges. This allowed accurate quantification of the corresponding six antibodies. Nonlinear mixed-effects modelling was applied to convert intensity readings from 3 determined dilutions to a single quantification value for each antibody.

Results

Median half-life for the 20 naturally infected vs 74 vaccinated subjects (two doses) was 120 vs 50 days for RBD, 127 vs 53 days for S1 and 187 vs 86 days for S2 antibodies respectively.

Conclusion

The newly proposed method, based on a series of a limited number of dilutions, can convert a conventional qualitative assay into a quantitative assay. This conversion helps define the sustainability of specific immune responses against each relevant viral antigen and can help in defining the protection characteristics after an infection or a vaccination.

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  1. SciScore for 10.1101/2021.12.28.21268183: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsField Sample Permit: The second collection is a prospective longitudinal cohort study conducted at the laboratory associated with the National reference center for respiratory viruses (University Hospital of Lyon, France).
    Consent: Ethical Statements: For the vaccinated subjects, a written informed consent was obtained from all participants; ethics approval was obtained from the national review board for biomedical research in April 2020 (Comité de Protection des Personnes Sud Méditerranée I, Marseille, France; ID RCB 2020-A00932-37), and the study was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04341142).
    IRB: Ethical Statements: For the vaccinated subjects, a written informed consent was obtained from all participants; ethics approval was obtained from the national review board for biomedical research in April 2020 (Comité de Protection des Personnes Sud Méditerranée I, Marseille, France; ID RCB 2020-A00932-37), and the study was registered on ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT04341142).
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.


    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: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT04341142RecruitingAssessment of Serological Techniques for Screening Patients …


    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

    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.