Infants and young children generate more durable antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults

Devyani Joshi; Lindsay E Nyhoff; Veronika I Zarnitsyna; Alberto Moreno; Kelly Manning; Susanne Linderman; Allison R Burrell; Kathy Stephens; Carson Norwood; Grace Mantus; Rafi Ahmed; Evan J Anderson; Mary A Staat; Mehul S Suthar; Jens Wrammert

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2023.107967

Infants and young children generate more durable antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 infection than adults

iScience. 2023 Sep 20;26(10):107967. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2023.107967. eCollection 2023 Oct 20.

Authors

Devyani Joshi^{1

2

3}, Lindsay E Nyhoff^{1

2

3}, Veronika I Zarnitsyna⁴, Alberto Moreno^{2

5

6}, Kelly Manning^{1

2

5}, Susanne Linderman^{2

4}, Allison R Burrell^{7

8}, Kathy Stephens³, Carson Norwood^{1

2

3}, Grace Mantus^{1

2

3}, Rafi Ahmed^{2

4}, Evan J Anderson^{1

3

6}, Mary A Staat^{7

9}, Mehul S Suthar^{1

2

3

4

5}, Jens Wrammert^{1

2

3}

Affiliations

¹ Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
² Emory Vaccine Center, Emory University School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.
³ Centers for Childhood Infections and Vaccines, Children's Healthcare of Atlanta, Emory University Department of Pediatrics Department of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.
⁴ Department of Microbiology and Immunology, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, USA.
⁵ Emory National Primate Research Center, Atlanta, GA, USA.
⁶ Department of Medicine, Emory University, School of Medicine, Atlanta, GA, USA.
⁷ Division of Infectious Diseases, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
⁸ Department of Environmental and Public Health Sciences, Division of Epidemiology, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA.
⁹ Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, Cincinnati, OH, USA.

Abstract

As SARS-CoV-2 becomes endemic, it is critical to understand immunity following early-life infection. We evaluated humoral responses to SARS-CoV-2 in 23 infants/young children. Antibody responses to SARS-CoV-2 spike antigens peaked approximately 30 days after infection and were maintained up to 500 days with little apparent decay. While the magnitude of humoral responses was similar to an adult cohort recovered from mild/moderate COVID-19, both binding and neutralization titers to WT SARS-CoV-2 were more durable in infants/young children, with spike and RBD IgG antibody half-life nearly 4X as long as in adults. IgG subtype analysis revealed that while IgG1 formed the majority of the response in both groups, IgG3 was more common in adults and IgG2 in infants/young children. These findings raise important questions regarding differential regulation of humoral immunity in infants/young children and adults and could have broad implications for the timing of vaccination and booster strategies in this age group.

Keywords: Clinical finding.

Abstract

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