Anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG responses are powerful predicting signatures for the outcome of COVID-19 patients.

Abstract

Introduction:

The COVID-19 global pandemic is far from ending. There is an urgent need to identify applicable biomarkers for early predicting the outcome of COVID-19. Growing evidences have revealed that SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies evolved with disease progression and severity in COIVD-19 patients.

Objectives:

We assumed that antibodies may serve as biomarkers for predicting the clinical outcome of hospitalized COVID-19 patients on admission.

Methods:

By taking advantage of a newly developed SARS-CoV-2 proteome microarray, we surveyed IgG responses against 20 proteins of SARS-CoV-2 in 1034 hospitalized COVID-19 patients on admission and followed till 66 days. The microarray results were further correlated with clinical information, laboratory test results and patient outcomes. Cox proportional hazards model was used to explore the association between SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies and COVID-19 mortality.

Results:

Nonsurvivors (n = 955) induced higher levels of IgG responses against most of non-structural proteins than survivors (n = 79) on admission. In particular, the magnitude of IgG antibodies against 8 non-structural proteins (NSP1, NSP4, NSP7, NSP8, NSP9, NSP10, RdRp, and NSP14) and 2 accessory proteins (ORF3b and ORF9b) possessed significant predictive power for patient death, even after further adjustments for demographics, comorbidities, and common laboratory biomarkers for disease severity (all with p trend < 0.05). Additionally, IgG responses to all of these 10 non-structural/accessory proteins were also associated with the severity of disease, and differential kinetics and serum positive rate of these IgG responses were confirmed in COVID-19 patients of varying severities within 20 days after symptoms onset. The area under curves (AUCs) for these IgG responses, determined by computational cross-validations, were between 0.62 and 0.71.

Conclusions:

Our findings might have important implications for improving clinical management of COVID-19 patients.

• Authors: Qing Lei, Cai-Zheng Yu, Yang Li, Hong-Yan Hou, Zhao-Wei Xu, Zong-Jie Yao, Yan-di Zhang, Dan-Yun Lai, Jo-Lewis Banga Ndzouboukou, Bo Zhang, Hong Chen, Zhu-Qing Ouyang, Jun-Biao Xue, Xiao-Song Lin, Yun-Xiao Zheng, Xue-Ning Wang, He-Wei Jiang, Hai-Nan Zhang, Huan Qi, Shu-Juan Guo, Mei-An He, Zi-Yong Sun, Feng Wang, Sheng-Ce Tao, Xiong-Lin Fan
• Journal: Journal of advanced research (J Adv Res) Vol. 36 Pg. 133-145 (02 2022) ISSN: 2090-1224 [Electronic] Egypt
• PMID: 35116173 (Publication Type: Journal Article, Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't)
• Copyright: © 2021 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of Cairo University.

Chemical References

• Antibodies, Viral
• Immunoglobulin G

Topics

• Antibodies, Viral
• COVID-19
• Humans
• Immunoglobulin G
• SARS-CoV-2
• Severity of Illness Index