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. 2022 Jan 22;10(2):174.
doi: 10.3390/vaccines10020174.

Determinants of the Development of SARS-CoV-2 Anti-Spike Immune-Response after Vaccination among Healthcare Workers in Egypt

Engy Mohamed El-Ghitany  1 , Mona H Hashish  2 , Shehata Farag  3 , Eman A Omran  2 , Azza Galal Farghaly  1 , Nashwa Fawzy Abd El-Moez Azzam  2
Affiliations

Determinants of the Development of SARS-CoV-2 Anti-Spike Immune-Response after Vaccination among Healthcare Workers in Egypt

Engy Mohamed El-Ghitany et al. Vaccines (Basel). .

Abstract

Background: Understanding the factors affecting humoral immune response to COVID-19 vaccines among healthcare workers (HCWs) is essential to predict their level of protection. Vaccination elicits antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 spike protein (anti-S).

Aim: To investigate the factors associated with the presence of SARS-CoV-2 anti-S antibodies among vaccinated HCWs.

Methods: This cross-sectional study included 143 vaccinated HCWs, with or without a history of previous COVID-19 infection (clinically, radiologically, or by laboratory results) from different departments. Socio-demographic, clinical, as well as vaccine-related data, were recorded. Serum samples were collected and tested for SARS-CoV-2 spike antibodies.

Results: Vaccination provoked an immunogenic response, where the overall anti-S positivity was 83.9% (95% CI: 77.8-90.0%). The response was not affected either by the age or gender of HCWs. Out of the 143 HCWs, 46 (32.1%; 95% CI: 24.4-39.9%) reported a previous history of COVID-19 infection, and seropositivity was significantly higher among them (p = 0.002), and it was associated with the frequency of infection (p = 0.044) and duration since diagnosis of COVID-19 infection (p = 0.065). They had higher median anti-S titers (111.8 RU/mL) than those without infection (39.8 RU/mL). Higher seropositivity was observed with Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine (AZD1222) (88.9%; 95% CI: 83.1-95.0%) than Sinopharm (BBIBP-CorV) (67.7%; 95% CI: 50.3-85.2%), and with receiving two doses of vaccine (92.3%; 95% CI: 87.1-97.5%).

Conclusions: Antibody positivity was significantly affected by the previous history of COVID-19 infection, type of vaccine, the number of doses received, and duration since vaccination.

Keywords: SARS-CoV-2 anti-spike antibody; healthcare workers; immune response; post-vaccination.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Correlation between anti-S titer and (a) the age in years and (b) the smoking index. Spearman’s correlation (rs) was used. rs with age= −0.16, p-value = 0.028 *; rs with smoking index (n = 21) = −0.431, p-value=0.026 *. * Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (1-tailed).
Figure 2
Figure 2
Box-Plot for anti-S titers (RU/mL) quartiles among vaccinated HCWs according to (a) the history of the previous infection, (b) the vaccine type in relation to the history of previous infection (c) the vaccine type in relation to the. duration since the last dose of vaccination and (d) the vaccine type in relation to the number of received doses. × indicates the mean value of the data being plotted. * indicates an outlier is present.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Anti-S seropositivity after each dose of vaccination according to COVID-19 history.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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