Prior seasonal coronavirus infection does not provoke immune response to SARS-CoV-2
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Previous seasonal coronavirus infection does not provide a cross-reactive immune response against SARS-CoV-2, according to a study published in Clinical Infectious Diseases.
The study did show that “neutralization activity against seasonal coronaviruses is nearly ubiquitous in sera collected from individuals with PCR-confirmed pre-pandemic seasonal coronavirus infection,” Daniel Poston, a PhD student at The Rockefeller University’s laboratory of retrovirology, and colleagues wrote. “Indeed, most sera had neutralizing activity against multiple seasonal coronaviruses and some sera had greater neutralization potency against different coronaviruses than the one detected at the time of sample collection.”
Poston and colleagues analyzed 37 pre-pandemic serum samples from symptomatic inpatients with a confirmed diagnosis of HCoV-OC43 (20), HCoV-NL63 (10) or HCoV-229E (7) patients in Edinburgh, Scotland. They also collected 10 serum samples between April and May 2020 from patients with symptomatic, PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. The researchers then used neutralization assays to assess whether prior seasonal coronavirus infection could elicit antibodies against SARS-CoV-2.
None of the 37 samples exposed to a prior coronavirus showed detectable neutralization effect against SARS-CoV-2, they reported. Samples exposed to a prior coronavirus did show neutralizing activity to the corresponding virus, but the neutralizing titers varied among each virus, according to the study.
While most sera showed neutralizing activity against multiple coronaviruses and others showed higher neutralization effect against different coronaviruses than those collected in the sample, the authors said this effect may be “due to inherent differences in neutralization sensitivity among the seasonal coronaviruses” due to a prior undocumented infection with another coronavirus.
“Unlike other reports, the pre-pandemic sera used in our study that have undetectable neutralization activity against SARS-CoV-2 can neutralize seasonal HCoVs, in some cases quite potently,” the researchers wrote. “While it is possible that there are rare instances of individuals possessing antibodies from prior seasonal HCoV infection that may be able to also target SARS-CoV-2 S, our data argue against a broad role for pre-existing protective humoral immunity against SARS-CoV-2.”
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