Vaccines (Dec 2022)

Longitudinal Characterization of a Neutralizing and Total Antibody Response in Patients with Severe COVID-19 and Fatal Outcomes

  • Ricardo Serna-Muñoz,
  • Alejandra Hernández-Terán,
  • Maribel Soto-Nava,
  • Daniela Tapia-Trejo,
  • Santiago Ávila-Ríos,
  • Fidencio Mejía-Nepomuceno,
  • Emma García,
  • Manuel Castillejos-López,
  • Anjarath Lorena Higuera-Iglesias,
  • Arnoldo Aquino-Gálvez,
  • Ireri Thirion-Romero,
  • Rogelio Pérez-Padilla,
  • José Leopoldo Aguilar-Faisal,
  • Joel Armando Vázquez-Pérez

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/vaccines10122063
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 10, no. 12
p. 2063

Abstract

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The host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 appears to play a critical role in disease pathogenesis and clinical manifestations in severe COVID-19 cases. Until now, the importance of developing a neutralizing antibody response in the acute phase and its relationship with progression to severe disease or fatal outcome among hospitalized patients remains unclear. In this study, we aim to characterize and compare longitudinally the primary humoral immune host response in the early stages of the disease, looking for an association between neutralization, antibody titers, infective viral lineage, and the clinical outcome in hospitalized and non-hospitalized patients. A total of 111 patients admitted at INER from November 2021 to June 2022 were included. We found that patients with negative or low neutralization showed a significant reduction in survival probability compared to patients with medium or high neutralization. We observed a significant decrease in the median of neutralization in patients infected with viral variants with changes in RBD of the spike protein. Our results suggest that developing an early and robust neutralizing response against SARS-CoV-2 may increase survival probability in critical patients.

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