Existence of immunological memory response in true sero-negative individuals post COVID-19 molecular diagnosis

Yaniv Lustig; Ella Mendelson; Michal Mandelboim; Asaf Biber; Einav G Levin; Carmit Cohen; Gili Regev-Yochay; Eli Schwartz

doi:10.1093/cid/ciac196

Existence of immunological memory response in true sero-negative individuals post COVID-19 molecular diagnosis

Clin Infect Dis. 2022 Mar 10:ciac196. doi: 10.1093/cid/ciac196. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yaniv Lustig^{1

2

3}, Ella Mendelson^{1

2}, Michal Mandelboim^{1

2}, Asaf Biber^{2

4}, Einav G Levin^{2

4}, Carmit Cohen⁴, Gili Regev-Yochay^{2

4}, Eli Schwartz^{2

4}

Affiliations

¹ Central Virology Laboratory, Public Health Services, Ministry of Health, Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel.
² Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel.
³ Vaccine Research Center, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD, USA.
⁴ Sheba Medical Center, Tel-Hashomer, Israel.

PMID: 35271690
DOI: 10.1093/cid/ciac196

Abstract

Approximately 1-8% of individuals do not develop antibodies following SARS-CoV-2 infection (sero-negatives). One BNT162b2 dose resulted in potent humoral response in 14 sero-negatives and 15 sero-positives, significantly higher than the response of 15 naïve-individuals, to two doses suggesting that COVID-19 provoked a memory response in individuals without detectable antibodies.

Published by Oxford University Press for the Infectious Diseases Society of America 2022. This work is written by (a) US Government employee(s) and is in the public domain in the US.