The impact of vaccine type and booster dose on the magnitude and breadth of SARS-CoV-2-specific systemic and mucosal antibodies among COVID-19 vaccine recipients

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on global health and economy, which was significantly mitigated by the availability of COVID-19 vaccines. The levels of systemic and mucosal antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 correlated with protection. However, there is limited data on how vaccine type and booster doses affect mucosal antibody response, and how the breadth of mucosal and systemic antibodies compares. In this cross-sectional study, we compared the magnitude and breadth of mucosal and systemic antibodies in 108 individuals who received either the BNT162b2 (Pfizer) or CoronaVac (SinoVac) vaccine. We found that BNT162b2 (vs CoronaVac) or booster doses (vs two doses) were significantly associated with higher serum IgG levels, but were not significantly associated with salivary IgA levels, regardless of prior infection status. Among non-infected individuals, serum IgG, serum IgA and salivary IgG levels were significantly higher against the ancestral strain than the Omicron BA.2 sublineage, but salivary IgA levels did not differ between the strains. Salivary IgA had the weakest correlation with serum IgG (r = 0.34) compared with salivary IgG (r = 0.63) and serum IgA (r = 0.60). Our findings suggest that intramuscular COVID-19 vaccines elicit a distinct mucosal IgA response that differs from the systemic IgG response. As mucosal IgA independently correlates with protection, vaccine trials should include mucosal IgA as an outcome measure.

Keywords

• COVID-19 vaccine
• SARS-CoV-2
• Omicron variant
• Mucosal immunity
• Saliva
• IgA