Emily
Editor, Senior Moderator
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.04.28.22274443v1
Evidence for Aerosol Transfer of SARS-CoV2-specific Humoral Immunity
Ross M. Kedl, Elena Hsieh, Thomas E. Morrison, Gabriela Samayoa-Reyes, Siobhan Flaherty, Conner L. Jackson, Rosemary Rochford
medRxiv 2022.04.28.22274443; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.04.28.22274443 This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.
Abstract
Despite the obvious knowledge that infectious particles can be shared through respiration, whether other constituents of the nasal/oral fluids can be passed between hosts has surprisingly never even been postulated, let alone investigated. The circumstances of the present pandemic facilitated a unique opportunity to fully examine this provocative idea. The data we show provides evidence for a new mechanism by which herd immunity may be manifested, the aerosol transfer of antibodies between immune and non-immune hosts.
...
Given these observations, we hypothesized that droplet/aerosolized antibody transfer might occur between individuals, much like droplet/aerosolized virus particles can be exchanged by the same route. To evaluate this hypothesis, we obtained nasal swabs from children living in households in which parents or family members had varying degrees of SARS-CoV2-specifc immunity, including those unvaccinated, vaccinated and COVID-19+. Initial comparison of nasal swabs acquired from children living in vaccinated households revealed readily detectable SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG (Fig 1E), especially when compared to the complete deficit of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody detected in the few nasal swabs we obtained from children in non-vaccinated households. We then used the variation in parents’ levels of intranasal IgG as the basis of stratification across all children’s samples. Log transformation of the data from thirty-four adult-child pairs established antibody cut-offs for high vs low parental intranasal antibody levels. Evaluation of samples in this fashion revealed that high intranasal IgG in vaccinated parents was significantly associated (p-value = 0.01) with a 0.38 increase in the log transformed intranasal IgG gMFIs within a child from the same household (Fig 1F). This significant positive relationship was observed using either parametric or non-parametric analysis, and adjustments for the correlation within household did not alter the conclusion. Though not statistically significant, a similar trend of elevated IgA was found in the same samples.
Evidence for Aerosol Transfer of SARS-CoV2-specific Humoral Immunity
Ross M. Kedl, Elena Hsieh, Thomas E. Morrison, Gabriela Samayoa-Reyes, Siobhan Flaherty, Conner L. Jackson, Rosemary Rochford
medRxiv 2022.04.28.22274443; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.04.28.22274443 This article is a preprint and has not been peer-reviewed [what does this mean?]. It reports new medical research that has yet to be evaluated and so should not be used to guide clinical practice.
Abstract
Despite the obvious knowledge that infectious particles can be shared through respiration, whether other constituents of the nasal/oral fluids can be passed between hosts has surprisingly never even been postulated, let alone investigated. The circumstances of the present pandemic facilitated a unique opportunity to fully examine this provocative idea. The data we show provides evidence for a new mechanism by which herd immunity may be manifested, the aerosol transfer of antibodies between immune and non-immune hosts.
...
Given these observations, we hypothesized that droplet/aerosolized antibody transfer might occur between individuals, much like droplet/aerosolized virus particles can be exchanged by the same route. To evaluate this hypothesis, we obtained nasal swabs from children living in households in which parents or family members had varying degrees of SARS-CoV2-specifc immunity, including those unvaccinated, vaccinated and COVID-19+. Initial comparison of nasal swabs acquired from children living in vaccinated households revealed readily detectable SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG (Fig 1E), especially when compared to the complete deficit of SARS-CoV-2-specific antibody detected in the few nasal swabs we obtained from children in non-vaccinated households. We then used the variation in parents’ levels of intranasal IgG as the basis of stratification across all children’s samples. Log transformation of the data from thirty-four adult-child pairs established antibody cut-offs for high vs low parental intranasal antibody levels. Evaluation of samples in this fashion revealed that high intranasal IgG in vaccinated parents was significantly associated (p-value = 0.01) with a 0.38 increase in the log transformed intranasal IgG gMFIs within a child from the same household (Fig 1F). This significant positive relationship was observed using either parametric or non-parametric analysis, and adjustments for the correlation within household did not alter the conclusion. Though not statistically significant, a similar trend of elevated IgA was found in the same samples.