Interindividual clinical variability in the course of SARS-CoV-2 infection is immense. We report that at least 101 of 987 patients with life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia had neutralizing IgG auto-Abs against IFN-ω (13 patients), the 13 types of IFN-α (36), or both (52), at the onset of critical disease; a few also had auto-Abs against the other three type I IFNs. The auto-Abs neutralize the ability of the corresponding type I IFNs to block SARS-CoV-2 infection in vitro. These auto-Abs were not found in 663 individuals with asymptomatic or mild SARS-CoV-2 infection and were present in only 4 of 1,227 healthy individuals. Patients with auto-Abs were aged 25 to 87 years and 95 were men. A B cell auto-immune phenocopy of inborn errors of type I IFN immunity underlies life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia in at least 2.6% of women and 12.5% of men.

Clinical outcome upon infection with SARS-CoV-2 ranges from silent infection to lethal COVID-19. We have found an enrichment in rare variants predicted to be loss-of-function (LOF) at the 13 human loci known to govern TLR3- and IRF7-dependent type I interferon (IFN) immunity to influenza virus, in 659 patients with life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia, relative to 534 subjects with asymptomatic or benign infection. By testing these and other rare variants at these 13 loci, we experimentally define LOF variants in 23 patients (3.5%), aged 17 to 77 years, underlying autosomal recessive or dominant deficiencies. We show that human fibroblasts with mutations affecting this pathway are vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2. Inborn errors of TLR3- and IRF7-dependent type I IFN immunity can underlie life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia in patients with no prior severe infection.

Significance There is growing evidence that preexisting autoantibodies neutralizing type I interferons (IFNs) are strong determinants of life-threatening COVID-19 pneumonia. It is important to estimate their quantitative impact on COVID-19 mortality upon SARS-CoV-2 infection, by age and sex, as both the prevalence of these autoantibodies and the risk of COVID-19 death increase with age and are higher in men. Using an unvaccinated sample of 1,261 deceased patients and 34,159 individuals from the general population, we found that autoantibodies against type I IFNs strongly increased the SARS-CoV-2 infection fatality rate at all ages, in both men and women. Autoantibodies against type I IFNs are strong and common predictors of life-threatening COVID-19. Testing for these autoantibodies should be considered in the general population.

Objectives Molecular assays on nasopharyngeal swabs remain the cornerstone of COVID-19 diagnostic. The high technicalities of nasopharyngeal sampling and molecular assays, as well as scarce resources of reagents, limit our testing capabilities. Several strategies failed, to date, to fully alleviate this testing process (e.g. saliva sampling or antigen testing on nasopharyngeal samples). We assessed the clinical performances of SARS-CoV-2 nucleocapsid antigen (N-antigen) ELISA detection in serum or plasma using the COVID-19 Quantigene® (AAZ, France) assay. Methods Performances were determined on 63 sera from 63 non-COVID patients and 227 serum samples (165 patients) from the French COVID and CoV-CONTACT cohorts with RT-PCR confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection, including 142 serum (114 patients) obtained within 14 days after symptoms’ onset. Results Specificity was 98.4% (95% confidence interval [CI], 95.3 to 100). Sensitivity was 79.3% overall (180/227, 95% CI, 74.0 to 84.6) and 93.0% (132/142, 95% CI, 88.7 to 97.2) within 14 days after symptoms onset. 91 included patients had a sera and nasopharyngeal swabs collected in the same 24 hours. Among those with high nasopharyngeal viral loads, i.e. Ct value below 30 and 33, only 1/50 and 4/67 tested negative for N-antigenemia, respectively. Among those with a negative nasopharyngeal RT-PCR, 8/12 presented positive N-antigenemia; the lower respiratory tract was explored for 6 of these 8 patients, showing positive RT-PCR in 5 cases. Conclusion This is the first evaluation of a commercially available serum N-antigen detection assay. It presents a robust specificity and sensitivity within the first 14 days after symptoms onset. This approach provides a valuable new option for COVID-19 diagnosis, only requiring a blood draw and easily scalable in all clinical laboratories.

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