{"doi":"10.1371/journal.pone.0254367","title":"Immune response dynamics in COVID-19 patients to SARS-CoV-2 and other human coronaviruses","abstract":"COVID-19 serological test must have high sensitivity as well as specificity to rule out cross-reactivity with common coronaviruses (HCoVs). We have developed a quantitative multiplex test, measuring antibodies against spike (S) proteins of SARS-CoV-2, SARS-CoV, MERS-CoV, and common human coronavirus strains (229E, NL63, OC43, HKU1), and nucleocapsid (N) protein of SARS-CoV viruses. Receptor binding domain of S protein of SARS-CoV-2 (S-RBD), and N protein, demonstrated sensitivity (94% and 92.5%, respectively) in COVID-19 patients (n = 53), with 98% specificity in non-COVID-19 respiratory-disease (n = 98), and healthy-controls (n = 129). Anti S-RBD and N antibodies appeared five to ten days post-onset of symptoms, peaking at approximately four weeks. The appearance of IgG and IgM coincided while IgG subtypes, IgG1 and IgG3 appeared soon after the total IgG; IgG2 and IgG4 remained undetectable. Several inflammatory cytokines/chemokines were found to be elevated in many COVID-19 patients (e.g., Eotaxin, Gro-α, CXCL-10 (IP-10), RANTES (CCL5), IL-2Rα, MCP-1, and SCGF-b); CXCL-10 was elevated in all. In contrast to antibody titers, levels of CXCL-10 decreased with the improvement in patient health suggesting it as a candidate for disease resolution. Importantly, anti-N antibodies appear before S-RBD and differentiate between vaccinated and infected people-current vaccines (and several in the pipeline) are S protein-based.","journal":"PLoS ONE","year":2021,"id":169404,"datarank":0.0,"base_score":0.0,"endowment":0.0,"self_citation_contribution":0.0,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.0,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":29,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.9658,"is_data_producer":false,"deposit_databanks":null,"is_oa":true,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2021-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":474579,"name":"Cindy B. McReynolds","orcid":"0000-0003-3309-1773","position":1,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":700280,"name":"Jun Yang","orcid":"0000-0002-6537-4391","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":242185,"name":"Bruce D. Hammock","orcid":"0000-0003-1408-8317","position":3,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":580429,"name":"Aamer Ikram","orcid":"0000-0002-6440-750X","position":4,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":700281,"name":"Amna Ali","orcid":"0000-0001-5745-2743","position":5,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":700282,"name":"Adnan Bashir","orcid":"0000-0001-7973-790X","position":6,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":700283,"name":"Tanzeel Zohra","orcid":"0000-0002-0489-8538","position":7,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":513808,"name":"W. L. William Chang","orcid":"0000-0002-1258-7369","position":8,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":413411,"name":"Dennis J. Hartigan-O’Connor","orcid":"0000-0003-4822-636X","position":9,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":700284,"name":"Hooman H. Rashidi","orcid":"0000-0002-5634-8490","position":10,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":577110,"name":"Imran Khan","orcid":"0000-0002-8764-2801","position":11,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":378254,"name":"Resmi Ravindran","orcid":"0000-0002-3532-0261","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":45,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-07-18T23:46:15.560174Z","pmid":"34242356","pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}