Long-Term Persistence of Spike Antibody and Predictive Modeling of Antibody Dynamics Following Infection with SARS-CoV-2

Grandjean, Louis; Saso, Anja; Ortiz, Arturo Torres; Lam, Tanya; Hatcher, James; Thistlethwayte, Rosie; Harris, Mark; Best, Timothy; Johnson, Marina; Wagstaffe, Helen; Ralph, Elizabeth; Mai, Annabelle; Colijn, Caroline; Breuer, Judith; Buckland, Matthew; Gilmour, Kimberly; Goldblatt, David

BACKGROUND: Antibodies to Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) have been shown to neutralize the virus in-vitro and prevent disease in animal challenge models upon re-exposure. However, current understanding of SARS-CoV-2 humoral dynamics and longevity is conflicting. METHODS: The Co-Stars study prospectively enrolled 3679 healthcare workers to comprehensively characterize the kinetics of SARS-CoV-2 spike (S), receptor-binding-domain (RBD) and nucleoprotein (N) antibodies in parallel. Participants screening seropositive had serial monthly serological testing for a maximum of 7 months with the Mesoscale Discovery Assay. Survival analysis determined the proportion of sero-reversion while two hierarchical Gamma models predicted the upper- and lower-bounds of long-term antibody trajectory. RESULTS: A total of 1163 monthly samples were provided from 349 seropositive participants. At 200 days post-symptoms, >95% of participants had detectable S-antibodies compared to 75% with detectable N-antibodies. S-antibody was predicted to remain detectable in 95% of participants until 465 days [95%CI 370-575] using a 'continuous-decay' model and indefinitely using a 'decay-to-plateau' model to account for antibody secretion by long-lived plasma cells. S-antibody titers correlated strongly with surrogate neutralization in-vitro (R 2=0.72). N-antibodies, however, decayed rapidly with a half-life of 60 days [95%CI 52-68]. CONCLUSIONS: The Co-STAR's study data presented here provides evidence for long-term persistence of neutralizing S-antibodies. This has important implications for the duration of functional immunity following SARS-CoV-2 infection. In contrast, the rapid decay of N-antibodies must be considered in future seroprevalence studies and public health decision-making. This is the first study to establish a mathematical framework capable of predicting long-term humoral dynamics following SARS-CoV-2 infection.