Division of Viral Products, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), FDA, Silver Spring, MD, 20993, USA.
Department of Anesthesiology, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Boston Children's Hospital, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
Nat Commun. 2022 May 27;13(1):2979. doi: 10.1038/s41467-022-30649-1.
Neutralization capacity of antibodies against Omicron after a prior SARS-CoV-2 infection in children and adolescents is not well studied. Therefore, we evaluated virus-neutralizing capacity against SARS-CoV-2 Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omicron variants by age-stratified analyses (<5, 5-11, 12-21 years) in 177 pediatric patients hospitalized with severe acute COVID-19, acute MIS-C, and in convalescent samples of outpatients with mild COVID-19 during 2020 and early 2021. Across all patients, less than 10% show neutralizing antibody titers against Omicron. Children <5 years of age hospitalized with severe acute COVID-19 have lower neutralizing antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 variants compared with patients >5 years of age. As expected, convalescent pediatric COVID-19 and MIS-C cohorts demonstrate higher neutralization titers than hospitalized acute COVID-19 patients. Overall, children and adolescents show some loss of cross-neutralization against all variants, with the most pronounced loss against Omicron. In contrast to SARS-CoV-2 infection, children vaccinated twice demonstrated higher titers against Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta and Omicron. These findings can influence transmission, re-infection and the clinical disease outcome from emerging SARS-CoV-2 variants and supports the need for vaccination in children.
儿童和青少年感染 SARS-CoV-2 后的中和抗体对奥密克戎的中和能力尚未得到充分研究。因此，我们通过年龄分层分析（<5 岁、5-11 岁、12-21 岁），评估了 177 名因严重急性 COVID-19、急性 MIS-C 住院的儿科患者以及 2020 年和 2021 年初轻度 COVID-19 门诊康复患者中针对 SARS-CoV-2 Alpha、Beta、Gamma、Delta 和奥密克戎变异株的病毒中和能力。在所有患者中，不到 10%的患者对奥密克戎显示出中和抗体滴度。与>5 岁的患者相比，因严重急性 COVID-19 住院的<5 岁儿童的 SARS-CoV-2 变异体中和抗体水平较低。如预期的那样，COVID-19 康复的儿科患者和 MIS-C 队列比急性 COVID-19 住院患者显示出更高的中和抗体滴度。总的来说，儿童和青少年对所有变异株的交叉中和能力都有一定程度的丧失，对奥密克戎的丧失最为明显。与 SARS-CoV-2 感染不同，接种两剂疫苗的儿童对 Alpha、Beta、Gamma、Delta 和奥密克戎的滴度更高。这些发现可能会影响新兴 SARS-CoV-2 变异株的传播、再感染和临床疾病结局，并支持儿童接种疫苗的必要性。
