JAMA Study finds wide variations of neutralizing antibodies in recovered patients of COVID-19

A recent study from China has found varying levels of Neutralising antibody (Nab) titers in COVID recovered patients. The recent study was published in the journal, "JAMA Internal Medicine" 2020.

The havoc caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 is continuing. Research on various treatment modalities for treating the COVID virus is running at an unprecedented speed. Of late much work was focused on analyzing the antibodies from COVID recovered serum. While a team of researchers is struggling to study the structure and function of antibodies for vaccine development, another team is toiling to study if antibodies can be isolated and given as treatment to patients. Researchers from Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center, Shanghai, China conducted a study to examine the association between clinical characteristics and levels of NAbs in patients who recovered from COVID-19.

The authors conducted a cohort study from January 24 to February 26, 2020. They were followed up until March 16, 2020. There were 175 patients with mild symptoms of COVID-19 who were hospitalized and were diagnosed and confirmed by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction testing of nasopharyngeal samples. The primary outcome was SARS-CoV-2–specific NAb titers. Secondary outcomes included spike-binding antibodies, cross-reactivity against SARS-associated CoV, the kinetics of NAb development, and clinical information, including age, sex, disease duration, length of stay, lymphocyte counts, and blood C-reactive protein level.