Effective virus-neutralizing activities in antisera from the first wave of survivors of severe COVID-19
Yang Han, … , Xi Zhou, Ying Wu
Yang Han, … , Xi Zhou, Ying Wu
Published January 21, 2021
Citation Information: JCI Insight. 2021;6(4):e146267. https://doi.org/10.1172/jci.insight.146267.
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Research Article COVID-19

Effective virus-neutralizing activities in antisera from the first wave of survivors of severe COVID-19

Abstract

The coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) pandemic, caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), has become the worst public health crisis in a century. However, knowledge about the dynamics of antibody responses in patients with COVID-19 is still poorly understood. In this study, we performed a serological study with serum specimens collected at the acute and the convalescent phases from 104 patients with severe COVID-19 who were part of the first wave of COVID-19 cases in Wuhan, China. Our findings revealed that neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 are persistent for at least 6 months in patients with severe COVID-19, despite that IgG levels against the receptor binding domain (RBD) and nucleocapsid protein (N) IgG declined from the acute to the convalescent phase. Moreover, we demonstrate that the level of RBD-IgG is capable of correlating with SARS-CoV-2–neutralizing activities in COVID-19 serum. In summary, our findings identify the magnitude, functionality, and longevity of antibody responses in patients with COVID-19, which sheds light on the humoral immune response to COVID-19 and would be beneficial for developing vaccines.

Authors

Yang Han, Peipei Liu, Yang Qiu, Jie Zhou, Ying Liu, Xujuan Hu, Qingyu Yang, Rui Huang, Xinyue Wen, Hao Song, Pengcheng Yu, Mengjie Yang, Jing Zhang, William J. Liu, Ke Peng, Guizhen Wu, Dingyu Zhang, Xi Zhou, Ying Wu

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Figure 1

Calculation of antibodies in patients with severe COVID-19 at the acute and the convalescent phases.

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Calculation of antibodies in patients with severe COVID-19 at the acute ...
(A) ELISAs measuring antiserum reactivity to RBD, S, and N proteins were shown; Optical density units at 450 nm (OD, Y axis) and reciprocal plasma dilutions (X axis). The red lines represent the antibody dilution curves for the 104 patients with severe COVID-19 at the acute phase, the green lines are antibody dilution curves for these patients at the convalescent phase and the black curves indicate the antibody dilution in the 31 healthy subjects. (B) RBD-, S-, and N-IgG of patients with severe COVID-19 during acute and convalescent phases were shown and the results of healthy subjects by the same analysis were used as the control group. All kinds of IgGs were calculated according to the normalized AUC values in (A). The P value between any 2 groups was calculated by Student–Newman–Keuls multiple comparisons test, ANOVA, ****P < 0.0001, ***P < 0.001, **P < 0.01, *P < 0.05.