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Longevity of seropositivity and neutralizing titers among SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals after 4 months from baseline: a population-based study in the province of Trento

Background. There are conflicting results about the duration of antibodies induced by SARS-CoV-2, but several studies show a rapid decay in a few months after infection. To evaluate antibody decline, we re-evaluated the presence of anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies among individuals found seropositive in a first population survey conducted 4 months before. Methods. All individuals above ten years of age resident in 5 municipalities of the Autonomous Province of Trento, northern Italy, who resulted IgG positive for anti-SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid (NC) antibodies in a serosurvey conducted on May 2020 were retested after 4 months. Anti-SARS-CoV-2 antibodies were detected using the Abbott SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay (Abbott Diagnostics, USA) detecting anti-NC antibodies. Samples that gave a negative result were re-tested using the same test plus Liaison SARS-CoV-2 IgG assay (DiaSorin, Italy) to assess anti-spike (S) S1/S2 IgG antibodies. Seroprevalence was calculated as the proportion of positive people on the total number of tested. A neutralizing assay was performed on a subgroup of formerly positives sera using fifty-percent tissue culture infective dose (TCID50) as endpoint dilution to produce a cytopathic effect in 50% of inoculated Vero E6 cells culture. In all the analyses a p value < 0.05 were considered statistically significant. Statistical analysis was performed by STATA version 16.1 (STATA Corp., College Station, Texas, USA). Findings. Overall, 1159 out of 1402 initially anti-NC seropositive participants were enrolled in the study. Of them, 480 (41.1%) became seronegative for anti-NC IgG antibodies. When 479 negative sera were tested for anti-S IgG, 373 samples (77.9%) resulted positives. A functional neutralization assay was performed on 106 sera showing high concordance with anti-S antibodies positivity. Interpretation. A decline of anti-NC IgG values was recorded 4 months after the first evaluation. Worth of note, a high proportion of anti-NC seronegative individuals were positive for anti-spike IgG antibodies, which appear to persist longer and to better correlate with neutralization activity.