The pandemic of
COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 has made serious threats to the public health.
Antibodies have been considered as promising
therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of pathogens. So far, effectors that can influence the sustainability of SARS-CoV-2 specific
antibodies in
COVID-19 patients are still unclear. In this paper, we attempted to find potential key factors correlated with SARS-CoV-2 specific
antibodies. Transcriptional analysis with the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) revealed proportional changes of immune cell subsets in
COVID-19 convalescent patients, including a substantial decrease of monocytes and evident increase of dendritic cells (DCs). Moreover, we found that the gene expressions of
chemokines associated with monocyte/macrophage were significantly up-regulated during the
COVID-19 recovery phase. Most importantly, we found a set of 27 immune genes corresponding to a comparatively lower amount of SARS-CoV-2 specific
antibodies, and identified two hub genes, IL1β and
IL6, the
protein expressions of which exhibited negative correlation with the
immunoglobulin G (
IgG) levels in
COVID-19 convalescent sera. In addition, we found that high expressions of these 2 hub genes during the convalescent stage were negatively associated with the plasma cell marker CD138. Our study presented two key inflammatory factors correlated to the low level of SARS-CoV-2 specific
antibodies, which indicated the potential regulatory process of plasmatic
antibodies levels in some
COVID-19 convalescent patients.