Preprint Club
A cross-institutional Journal Club Initiative

Keywords

• COVID-19

• IgG

• Inflammation

Main Findings

Mild COVID-19 patients who experienced a worsening disease trajectory were characterised by the absence of an early robust neutralising IgG response with elevations in both afucosylated anti-spike IgG and the CD16a receptor on myeloid cells, which contribute to the inflammatory phenotype.

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Limitations

• IgG post-translational modifications are also associated with specific patient characteristics including sex, age, demographic features

• The mouse model is not a model of COVID-19 pathogenesis

• The authors did not discuss the impact of afucosylation on IgG confirmation and the potential link with their non-neutralising activity

• The authors did not discuss the potential benefit to use selective blockades of CD16a

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Significance/Novelty

• They demonstrated the functional link between afucosylated IgG and induction of lung inflammation in an in vivo model.

• Elevated concentrations of afucosylated IgG could be included in a panel of predictive factors of worsening COVID-19.

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Credit

Reviewed by Stephanie Longet as part of the cross-institutional journal club of the Immunology Institute of the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology and the Oxford Centre for Immuno-Oncology  (OXCIO) (University of Oxford, GB) and Karolinska Institute’s Center for Infectious Medicine (CIM) & Center for Molecular Medicine (CMM).