Joint Laboratory of Infectious Diseases and Health, Wuhan Institute of Virology & Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
NHC Key Laboratory of Biosafety, National Institute for Viral Disease Control and Prevention, Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Beijing, China.
JCI Insight. 2021 Feb 22;6(4):146267. doi: 10.1172/jci.insight.146267.
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.
新型冠状病毒病（COVID-19）大流行是由严重急性呼吸综合征冠状病毒 2（SARS-CoV-2）引起的，它已成为一个世纪以来最严重的公共卫生危机。然而，人们对 COVID-19 患者抗体反应动力学的了解仍然很有限。在这项研究中，我们对来自中国武汉 COVID-19 第一波疫情的 104 例重症 COVID-19 患者在急性期和恢复期采集的血清标本进行了血清学研究。我们的研究结果表明，重症 COVID-19 患者体内针对 SARS-CoV-2 的中和抗体至少可维持 6 个月，尽管针对受体结合域（RBD）和核衣壳蛋白（N）的 IgG 水平从急性期到恢复期下降。此外，我们证明 RBD-IgG 水平能够与 COVID-19 血清中的 SARS-CoV-2 中和活性相关。总之，我们的研究结果确定了 COVID-19 患者的抗体反应的幅度、功能和持久性，为了解 COVID-19 的体液免疫反应提供了线索，并有助于开发疫苗。
