Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2020 Sep 22:8:570543.
doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2020.570543. eCollection 2020.

Antibody Profiling of COVID-19 Patients in an Urban Low-Incidence Region in Northern Germany

Werner Solbach  1   2 , Julia Schiffner  2 , Insa Backhaus  2   3 , David Burger  4 , Ralf Staiger  5 , Bettina Tiemer  6 , Andreas Bobrowski  6 , Timothy Hutchings  4 , Alexander Mischnik  2
Affiliations

Antibody Profiling of COVID-19 Patients in an Urban Low-Incidence Region in Northern Germany

Werner Solbach et al. Front Public Health. .

Abstract

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.

Keywords: COVID-19; IgA; IgG; SARS-CoV-2; herd immunity; immunoglobulin; seroprevalence.

PubMed Disclaimer

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Development of the COVID-19 pandemic in the City of Lübeck (above), in Germany (middle) and incidence/100,000 inhabitants in the city of Lübeck (below).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Flowchart of participant enrollment.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Simple Scatter of IgA Antibodies by days after symptom onset.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Simple Scatter of IgG Antibodies by days after symptom onset.
Figure 5
Figure 5
IgA antibody development by days after symptom onset.
Figure 6
Figure 6
IgG antibody development by days after symptom onset.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

See all "Cited by" articles

References

    1. Huang C, Wang Y, Li X, Ren L, Zhao J, Hu Y, et al. . Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China. Lancet. (2020) 395:497–506. 10.1016/S0140-6736(20)30183-5 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Zhu N, Zhang D, Wang W, Li X, Yang B, Song J, et al. . A Novel Coronavirus from Patients with Pneumonia in China, 2019. N Engl J Med. (2020) 382:727–33. 10.1056/NEJMoa2001017 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Onder G, Rezza G, Brusaferro S. Case-fatality rate and characteristics of patients dying in relation to COVID-19 in Italy. JAMA. (2020). [Epub ahead of print]. 10.1001/jama.2020.4683. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Bi Q, Wu Y, Mei S, Ye C, Zou X, Zhang Z, et al. . Epidemiology and transmission of COVID-19 in 391 cases and 1286 of their close contacts in Shenzhen, China: a retrospective cohort study. Lancet Infect Dis. (2020) 20:911–9. 10.1016/S1473-3099(20)30287-5 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Gudbjartsson DF, Helgason A, Jonsson H, Magnusson OT, Melsted P, Norddahl GL, et al. . Spread of SARS-CoV-2 in the Icelandic Population. N Engl J Med. (2020) 382:2302–15. 10.1056/NEJMoa2006100 - DOI - PMC - PubMed

Substances