Frontiers in Immunology (Feb 2022)

Associations Between Symptoms, Donor Characteristics and IgG Antibody Response in 2082 COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma Donors

  • Marieke Vinkenoog,
  • Marieke Vinkenoog,
  • Maurice Steenhuis,
  • Maurice Steenhuis,
  • Anja ten Brinke,
  • Anja ten Brinke,
  • J. G. Coen van Hasselt,
  • Mart P. Janssen,
  • Mart P. Janssen,
  • Matthijs van Leeuwen,
  • Francis H. Swaneveld,
  • Hans Vrielink,
  • Leo van de Watering,
  • Franke Quee,
  • Katja van den Hurk,
  • Theo Rispens,
  • Theo Rispens,
  • Boris Hogema,
  • C. Ellen van der Schoot

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2022.821721
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 13

Abstract

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Many studies already reported on the association between patient characteristics on the severity of COVID-19 disease outcome, but the relation with SARS-CoV-2 antibody levels is less clear. To investigate this in more detail, we performed a retrospective observational study in which we used the IgG antibody response from 11,118 longitudinal antibody measurements of 2,082 unique COVID convalescent plasma donors. COVID-19 symptoms and donor characteristics were obtained by a questionnaire. Antibody responses were modelled using a linear mixed-effects model. Our study confirms that the SARS-CoV-2 antibody response is associated with patient characteristics like body mass index and age. Antibody decay was faster in male than in female donors (average half-life of 62 versus 72 days). Most interestingly, we also found that three symptoms (headache, anosmia, nasal cold) were associated with lower peak IgG, while six other symptoms (dry cough, fatigue, diarrhoea, fever, dyspnoea, muscle weakness) were associated with higher IgG concentrations.

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