Solbach Werner, Schiffner Julia, Backhaus Insa, Burger David, Staiger Ralf, Tiemer Bettina, Bobrowski Andreas, Hutchings Timothy, Mischnik Alexander
Center for Infection and Inflammation Research, University of Lübeck, Lübeck, Germany.
Health Protection Authority, Lübeck, Germany.
Front Public Health. 2020 Sep 22;8:570543. doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.570543. eCollection 2020.
A vast majority of COVID-19 cases present with mild or moderate symptoms. The study region is in an urban and well-defined environment in a low-incidence region in Northern Germany. In the present study, we explored the dynamics of the antibody response with respect to onset, level and duration in patients with confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG and IgA were detected by automated enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients monitored by the Health Protection Authority. This explorative monocentric study shows IgA and IgG antibody profiles from 118 patients with self-reported mild to moderate, or no COVID-19 related symptoms after laboratory-confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2. We found that 21.7% and 18.1% of patients were seronegative for IgA or IgG, respectively. Clinically, most of the seronegative patients showed no to only moderate symptoms. With regard to antibody profiling 82% of all patients developed sustainable antibodies (IgG) and 78% (IgA) 3 weeks or later after the infection. Our data indicate that antibody-positivity is a useful indicator of a previous SARS-CoV-2 infection. Negative antibodies do not rule out SARS-CoV-2 infection. Future studies are needed to determine the functionality of the antibodies in terms of neutralization capacity leading to personal protection and prevention ability to transmit the virus as well as to protect after vaccination.
绝大多数新冠肺炎病例表现为轻度或中度症状。研究区域位于德国北部低发病率地区的一个城市且界限明确的环境中。在本研究中，我们探讨了确诊感染严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒2（SARS-CoV-2）患者抗体反应在发病、水平和持续时间方面的动态变化。通过卫生防护局监测的SARS-CoV-2感染患者的自动酶联免疫吸附测定（ELISA）检测抗SARS-CoV-2 IgG和IgA。这项探索性的单中心研究展示了118例在实验室确诊感染SARS-CoV-2后自我报告有轻度至中度或无新冠肺炎相关症状患者的IgA和IgG抗体谱。我们发现，分别有21.7%和18.1%的患者IgA或IgG血清学检测呈阴性。临床上，大多数血清学检测呈阴性的患者表现为无至仅中度症状。关于抗体谱分析，82%的患者在感染3周或更晚后产生了可持续抗体（IgG），78%（IgA）产生了可持续抗体。我们的数据表明，抗体阳性是既往感染SARS-CoV-2的一个有用指标。抗体阴性不能排除SARS-CoV-2感染。未来需要开展研究，以确定抗体在中和能力方面的功能，即导致个人防护和预防病毒传播的能力以及接种疫苗后的保护能力。
