Cross-reactive humoral immune responses against seasonal human coronaviruses in COVID-19 patients with different disease severity

Imai, Kazuo; Matsuoka, Masaru; Tabata, Sakiko; Kitagawa, Yutaro; Nagura-Ikeda, Mayu; Kubota, Katsumi; Fukada, Ai; Takada, Tomohito; Sato, Momoko; Noguchi, Sakiko; Takeuchi, Shinichi; Arakawa, Noriaki; Miyoshi, Kazuyasu; Saito, Yoshiro; Maeda, Takuya

BACKGROUND: We evaluated the cross-reactive antibody response against seasonal human coronaviruses (HCoVs) according to disease severity in patients with COVID-19 in Japan. METHODS: We analyzed 194 paired-collected serum samples from 97 patients with COVID-19 (mild, 35; severe, 62) on admission and during convalescence. IgG antibodies against the nucleocapsid (N) and spike (S) proteins of SARS-CoV-2 and four seasonal HCoVs (HCoV-NL63, -229E, -OC43, and -HKU1) were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays. RESULTS: There was no difference in optical density (OD) values for seasonal HCoVs on admission between the severe and mild cases. In addition, a specific pattern of disease severity-associated OD values for HCoVs was not identified. A significant increase of OD values from admission to convalescence for HCoV-HKU1and -OC43 IgG-S and HCoV-NL63 and -229E IgG-N was observed in the severe cases. Significant differences were observed between the mild and severe cases for HCoV-HKU1 and -OC43 IgG-S OD values during convalescence. Correlations were found between the fold-change of HCoV-OC43 IgG-S OD values with the fold-change of SARS-CoV-2 IgG-S OD values and C-reactive protein, lactate dehydrogenase, and lymphocyte levels. CONCLUSIONS: There was no association between the antibody titer of seasonal HCoVs in the early phase of COVID-19 and disease severity.