Article ID: JJID.2022.093
This study aimed to investigate the difference in antibody titers indicative of the presence of SARS-CoV-2 between those who had experienced symptoms of Coronavirus Disease of 2019 (COVID-19) infection and those who had never shown symptoms. The study used data from a cross-sectional survey conducted at the National Cancer Center Japan in 434 individuals who reported no previous infection with COVID-19. Participants provided self-reported symptoms beginning from the start of 2020. A generalized linear model was used to compare the mean SARS-CoV-2-specific IgG nucleocapsid protein (N-IgG) titer with estimated confidence intervals (CI) according to the onset of symptoms indicative of COVID-19. We observed a tendency toward an association between higher mean N-IgG titers and having had a high fever within the past eight months (p = 0.053). The mean N-IgG titer was higher for those with a history of symptoms (p = 0.03) and for those with more than three symptoms (p < 0.01) than for those with no symptoms. We demonstrated that the mean N-IgG titer was higher in those who had any symptom and a greater number of symptoms that might indicate COVID-19, relative to those without symptoms, suggesting that transient but contained SARS-CoV-2 infection had occurred.
