Transfusion-Dependent Thalassaemia Patients Display Mild COVID-19, Weakened Antibody Response
In a recent research published in the journal Cureus, patients with transfusion-dependent thalassaemia (TDT) were shown to have moderate or asymptomatic COVID-19 manifestations.
Patients with TDT had an immunoglobulin G (IgG) response to SARS-CoV-2 that was equivalent to that of controls in this investigation. “However, the serological response cannot be sustained over three to six months as they have a more rapid fall in antibody titers when compared to the control group,” they noted in their paper.
The research included individuals with COVID-19 who had tested positive for the virus during the prior 6 weeks and were examined at a tertiary care centre. Patients included in the analysis were either persons with TDT or individuals without thalassaemia, with the two groups matched by age and gender.
An examination of IgG antibody levels and COVID-19 clinical profiles was the major study result. The secondary result was an assessment of the link between the severity of COVID-19 and IgG levels. In this study, patients were monitored for 24 weeks.
Each patient group had 30 patients. TDT patients had a mean age of 12.7 years (standard deviation, 4.7), while the control group had a mean age of 13.9 years (standard deviation, 7). There were 12 patients with TDT who had symptoms of COVID-19, compared to 22 patients in the control group (P =.009). Asymptomatic infections were identified in 18 of the TDT patients and 8 of the control patients.
Among those with symptoms, symptomatic COVID-19 was rated as modest in both patient groups.
Cough was the most prevalent symptom among TDT patients, whereas fever was the most common symptom in the control group. Patients with symptomatic COVID-19 had a mean duration of illness of 5 days (SD, 1.6) in the TDT group, compared to 4 days (SD, 1.5) in the control group.
At 6 weeks, there was no statistically significant difference in median IgG titers between patients with TDT and those in the control group (P =.40). IgG titers decreased in both TDT patients and the control group during the course of the trial.
However, at 12 weeks, TDT patients had a substantially lower median IgG titer (P =.01) than the control group, and this was similarly true at 24 weeks (P =.006). COVID-19 severity did not appear to be related to IgG titers or pre-existing comorbidities.
The researchers found that the majority of TDT patients in this trial exhibited mild or asymptomatic COVID-19, as well as an IgG response that was not substantially different from the control group. They did, however, observe that TDT patients had a higher drop in serological response over time than the control group, emphasising the need of immunisation for these individuals.
Source: COVID-19 antibody response in patients with thalassemia. Cureus. (2023)
