Prevalence of saliva immunoglobulin A antibodies reactive with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 among Japanese people unexposed to the virus

While the COVID‐19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS‐CoV‐2) poses a threat to public health as the number of cases and COVID‐19‐related deaths are increasing worldwide, the incidence of the virus infection is extremely low in Japan compared with many other countries. To explain this uncommon phenomenon, we investigated the prevalence of naturally occurring (“natural”) antibodies, focusing on those of the secretory immunoglobulin A (sIgA) form, reactive with SARS‐CoV‐2 among Japanese people. One hundred and eighty healthy Japanese volunteers of a wide range of age who had been considered to be unexposed to SARS‐CoV‐2 participated in this study. Saliva samples and blood samples were collected from all of the 180 participants and 139 adults (aged ≥ 20 years) included therein, respectively. The determination of saliva IgA antibodies, mostly comprising sIgA antibodies, as well as serum IgA and immunoglobulin G antibodies, reactive with the receptor binding domain of the SARS‐CoV‐2 spike‐1 subunit proteins was conducted using an enzyme‐linked immunosorbent assay. The major findings were that 52.78% (95% confidence interval, 45.21%–60.25%) of the individuals who had not been exposed to SARS‐CoV‐2 were positive for saliva IgA antibodies with a wide range of levels between 0.002 and 3.272 ng/mL, and that there may be a negative trend in positivity for the antibodies according to age. As we had expected, a frequent occurrence of assumable “natural” sIgA antibodies reactive with SARS‐CoV‐2 among the studied Japanese participant population was observed.