The pandemic of COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 has made serious threats to the public health. Antibodies have been considered as promising therapeutics for the prevention and treatment of pathogens. So far, effectors that can influence the sustainability of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies in COVID-19 patients are still unclear. In this paper, we attempted to find potential key factors correlated with SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies. Transcriptional analysis with the peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) revealed proportional changes of immune cell subsets in COVID-19 convalescent patients, including a substantial decrease of monocytes and evident increase of dendritic cells (DCs). Moreover, we found that the gene expressions of chemokines associated with monocyte/macrophage were significantly up-regulated during the COVID-19 recovery phase. Most importantly, we found a set of 27 immune genes corresponding to a comparatively lower amount of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies, and identified two hub genes, IL1β and IL6, the protein expressions of which exhibited negative correlation with the immunoglobulin G (IgG) levels in COVID-19 convalescent sera. In addition, we found that high expressions of these 2 hub genes during the convalescent stage were negatively associated with the plasma cell marker CD138. Our study presented two key inflammatory factors correlated to the low level of SARS-CoV-2 specific antibodies, which indicated the potential regulatory process of plasmatic antibodies levels in some COVID-19 convalescent patients.

由 SARS-CoV-2 引起的 COVID-19 大流行对公众健康构成了严重威胁。抗体已被认为是预防和治疗病原体的有希望的疗法。到目前为止，影响 COVID-19 患者 SARS-CoV-2 特异性抗体可持续性的效应器仍不清楚。在本文中，我们试图找到与 SARS-CoV-2 特异性抗体相关的潜在关键因素。外周血单核细胞 (PBMC) 的转录分析揭示了 COVID-19 恢复期患者免疫细胞亚群的成比例变化，包括单核细胞显着减少和树突状细胞 (DC) 明显增加。此外，我们发现与单核细胞/巨噬细胞相关的趋化因子的基因表达在 COVID-19 恢复阶段显着上调。IL1β和IL6，其蛋白表达与COVID-19恢复期血清中的免疫球蛋白G（IgG）水平呈负相关。此外，我们发现这 2 个中枢基因在恢复期的高表达与浆细胞标志物 CD138 呈负相关。我们的研究提出了与 SARS-CoV-2 特异性抗体水平低相关的两个关键炎症因子，这表明了一些 COVID-19 恢复期患者血浆抗体水平的潜在调节过程。