iScience
Volume 26, Issue 3, 17 March 2023, 106124
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Article
Tocilizumab-treated convalescent COVID-19 patients retain the cross-neutralization potential against SARS-CoV-2 variants

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.106124Get rights and content
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Highlights

  • SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG1 titers depended on disease severity but not on tocilizumab

  • No major impact of tocilizumab on the B cell subsets and SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG1

  • Tocilizumab does not alter plasma virus neutralization capacity for SARS-CoV-2 VOCs

Summary

Although tocilizumab treatment in severe and critical coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) patients has proven its efficacy at the clinical level, there is little evidence supporting the effect of short-term use of interleukin-6 receptor blocking therapy on the B cell sub-populations and the cross-neutralization of SARS-CoV-2 variants in convalescent COVID-19 patients. We performed immunological profiling of 69 tocilizumab-treated and non-treated convalescent COVID-19 patients in total. We observed that SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG1 titers depended on disease severity but not on tocilizumab treatment. The plasma of both treated and non-treated patients infected with the ancestral variant exhibit strong neutralizing activity against the ancestral virus and the Alpha, Beta, and Delta variants of SARS-CoV-2, whereas the Gamma and Omicron viruses were less sensitive to seroneutralization. Overall, we observed that, despite the clinical benefits of short-term tocilizumab therapy in modifying the cytokine storm associated with COVID-19 infections, there were no modifications in the robustness of B cell and IgG responses to Spike antigens.

Subject areas

Health sciences
Virology
treatment
Immunology

Data and code availability

  • All data reported in this paper will be shared by the lead contact upon request.

  • This paper does not report original code.

  • Any additional information required to reanalyze the data reported in this paper is available from the lead contact upon request.

  • Additional Supplemental Items are available from Mendeley Data at https://doi.org/10.17632/krh7cy99wg.1.

Cited by (0)

25

These authors contributed equally

26

These authors contributed equally

27

Senior author

28

Lead contact