Sars-Cov-2 Antibodies And Associated Factors At Different Hospitalization Time Points In 192 Covid-19 Cases

Background: We launched a retrospective analysis of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies in 192 patients with COVID-19, aiming to depict the kinetic profile of SARS-CoV-2 antibodies and explore the factors related to SARS-CoV-2 antibody expression.Methods: Data on 192 confirmed patients with COVID-19 between January and February 2020 was collected from the designated hospital that received patients with COVID-19 in Guangzhou, China. Moreover, a cohort of 130 suspected patients with COVID-19 and 209 healthy people were also enrolled in this study. IgM and IgG antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 were detected by the chemiluminescence immunoassay kits in different groups.Results: A total of 192 COVID-19 cases were analyzed, of which had 81.8% anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM detected and 93.2% anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG detected, respectively, at the time of sampling. The kinetics of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG showed that, the confirmed cases had anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM seroconversion occurred 5-10days after the onset of the symptoms, and then IgM rose rapidly to reach a peak within around 2-3weeks, maintaining at its peak for 1week before its decline. While they had anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgG seroconversion simultaneously or sequentially with IgM, reaching its peak within around 3 to 4weeks and began to decline after the fifth week. Besides, correlation analysis showed that in patients with COVID-19 the level of IgM was related to gender and disease severity (P<0.01), and the level of IgG was related to age and disease severity (P<0.001). The univariate analysis of relevant factors indicated that the level of IgG had a weak correlation with age (r=0.374, P<0.01). The level of IgM in male patients was higher than that in female patients (P<0.001). The expression level of anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG were positively correlated with the severity of COVID-19 and the duration of the virus in the patients.Conclusion: The findings of this study show that anti-SARS-CoV-2 IgM and IgG can be important assisting COVID-19 diagnosis, especially in the early phase of infection. Furthermore, antibody expression in patients with COVID-19 is also correlated with disease severity, age, gender, and virus clearance or continuous replication.